She listened, with her eyes down, making, kettle and all, the prettiest picture possible. There was no light in the outhouse except that which came from a little four-penny brass hand-lamp, which the girl must have lit just before her last entrance into the inner room. It was behind her, on a shelf against the wall; and the light shone through the loose threads of her fair hair, making an aureole round the side view of her little head. She was bewitching like that, so the susceptible Max thought, while he debated with himself whether he now dared to try again for that small reward. And he reluctantly decided that he did not dare. And again there was something piquant in the fact of his not daring. The girl, after a short pause, looked up; perhaps, though not so susceptible as he, she was not insensible to the fact that Max was young and handsome, well dressed, a little in love with her, and altogether different from the types of male humanity most common to Limehouse. "If," she suggested at last, with some hesitation, "you really think it better to see my grandmother, she will be down very soon. I'm going to make some tea; and you could wait, if you liked, in the next room." "I should be delighted," said Max. Off came the gloves; and as the girl tripped quickly into the adjoining room, he followed with alacrity. "Mind," cried she suddenly, as she turned from the fireplace and stood by the table in an attitude of warning, "it is at your own risk, you know, that you stay. You can guess that the people who belong to a hole-and-corner place like this are not the sort you're accustomed to meet at West-End dinner tables, nor yet at an archbishop's garden-party. But as you've stayed so long, it will be better for me if you stay till you have seen Granny, as she must have heard me talking to you by this time." Now Max, in the interest of his conversation with the girl, had forgotten all about less pleasant subjects. Now that they were suddenly recalled to his mind, he felt uneasy at the idea of the unseen but ever-watchful "Granny," who might be listening to every word he uttered, noting every glance he threw at the girl. And then the natural suspicion flashed into his mind: Was there a "Granny" after all? or was the invisible one some person more to be dreaded than any old woman? Another glance at the girl, and the fascinated, bewildered Max resolved to risk everything for a little more of her society. CHAPTER X. GRANNY. There was some constraint upon them both at first; and Max had had time to feel a momentary regret that he had been foolish enough to stay, when he was surprised to find the girl's eyes staring fixedly at a small parcel which he had taken from his coat-tail pocket and placed upon the table. It was a paper of biscuits which he had brought from the public-house. He had forgotten them till that moment. "I brought these for you--" he began.