Lesbia, looking like a fairy princess attended by her dwarf, perched herself on the kitchen table with a severe face. To lose no time while being questioned, Tim set to work peeling the potatoes, for Mr. Hale growled like a bear when his meals were not placed punctually on the table. As he peeled each potato, he dropped it with a splash into a bucket of clean water and rarely raised his sad eyes to the face of his young mistress during the conversation which ensued. Also--and this Lesbia noticed--he conversed very reluctantly, and every admission was wrung from unwilling lips. "Tim," said his mistress severely, and beginning at the beginning, "you are the only son of my nurse, Bridget Burke." "I am that, Miss, her only boy, Miss, and a good mother she was to me." "A good nurse also, Tim. She loved me." "An' who wudn't, ye pretty creature? Ain't I devoted to ye likewise, me darlin'? Answer me that now?" "I shall do so," said Miss Hale significantly, "when our conversation comes to an end." Tim groaned and winced. "Bad luck to the crass," he breathed, "an' may the Vargin forgive me for sayin that same." "Why, bad luck to the cross?" demanded Lesbia, coming to the point. "An' how shud I know, me dear?" "But you do know," she insisted. "Tim, your mother gave me that cross." "Did she now?--the owd fool." "How dare you, Tim, and Bridget dead? She was your mother." "Deed an' well she might be, Miss, for an uglier owd woman nivir could be found in County Clare, forby she left it for this blissid country whin I wor a gossoon." "Did my father bring her over from Ireland, Tim?" "Not he," Tim shook his Judas-coloured head. "Divil an eye did the pair av us clap on the gintleman for many a long day. Wasn't I a bare-futted brat runnin' wild about Whitechapel till my father--rest his sowl--wos tuck by the police for shop-liftin'--bad luck to thim? An' he died in gaol, poor man--ah, that he did, laving me mother an' me widout bread in the mouths av us." "What did Bridget do then, Tim?" "Sure she come to Wimbleton or a place hard by," admitted Tim reluctantly, "sellin' apples an' nuts, an' a mighty bad thing she made by the sale." "I want to know exactly how she came to be my nurse?" said Lesbia. Tim bent over the potatoes deeply interested in the peeling. "Why, Miss, your father--" here he swallowed something--"the masther, Miss, and a kind, good gintleman, tuck pity on her and give her the situation as your nurse, me dear." "But my mother?" "Oh, howly saints, an' how cud she say anything whin she wos dyin' an' you but a year old? But my mother nursed you like her own choild, Miss, till ye went to that school at Hampstead. But ye came back here just whin she was dyin', poor sowl." "I did, a year ago," said Lesbia significantly, "and in time to receive the cross, Tim." "May the father av lies fly away wid it!" groaned the dwarf. "An' may the saints forgive me for the wicked wish." "Whatever do you mean, Tim?"