f air, perhaps due to the bushy curls of his grizzled hair, the
smallness of his hands and feet, and his light walk.

"You seem to have done well for yourself, Mirah? _You_ are in no want,
I see," said the father, looking at her with emphatic examination.

"Good friends who found me in distress have helped me to get work,"
said Mirah, hardly knowing what she actually said, from being occupied
with what she would presently have to say. "I give lessons. I have sung
in private houses. I have just been singing at a private concert." She
paused, and then added, with significance, "I have very good friends,
who know all about me."

"And you would be ashamed they should see your father in this plight?
No wonder. I came to England with no prospect, but the chance of
finding you. It was a mad quest; but a father's heart is
superstitious--feels a loadstone drawing it somewhere or other. I might
have done very well, staying abroad: when I hadn't you to take care of,
I could have rolled or settled as easily as a ball; but it's hard being
lonely in the world, when your spirit's beginning to break. And I
thought my little Mirah would repent leaving her father when she came
to look back. I've had a sharp pinch to work my way; I don't know what
I shall come down to next. Talents like mine are no use in this
country. When a man's getting out at elbows nobody will believe in him.
I couldn't get any decent employ with my appearance. I've been obliged
to get pretty low for a shilling already."

Mirah's anxiety was quick enough to imagine her father's sinking into a
further degradation, which she was bound to hinder if she could. But
before she could answer his string of inventive sentences, delivered
with as much glibness as if they had been learned by rote, he added
promptly--

"Where do you live, Mirah?"

"Here, in this square. We are not far from the house."

"In lodgings?"

"Yes."

"Any one to take care of you?"

"Yes," said Mirah again, looking full at the keen face which was turned
toward hers--"my brother."

The father's eyelids fluttered as if the lightning had come across
them, and there was a slight movement of the shoulders. But he said,
after a just perceptible pause: "Ezra? How did you know--how did you
find him?"

"That would take long to tell. Here we are at the door. My brother
would not wish me to close it on you."

Mirah was already on the doorstep, but had her face turned toward her
father, who stood be