had even gone so far
as to suggest that his master was bringing her up to the business.
"Pays us for looking after her," he confided to his wife, "and looks
after her himself!"

Mrs. Bullen laughed and then sighed, being a soft-hearted woman,
and inclined to grieve over their impending desertion of their
unbusinesslike master.

"Mr. Philip couldn't do more for her if he was her own father," she
acknowledged appreciatively.

Whereat Bullen had smiled with the superior air of one who knew--of
one who had been down to the sea in ships, and was versed in the
mysteries of the great world, of fathers and of children.

"Right you are, old woman," he chuckled, "no more he could. Blessed
if he could! And there's no mistake about that. And when you and me
go North in the spring, why, it strikes me that we shall have to
leave missie behind. Yes, that we shall: though I'd take her, glad
enough, without the money."

If at first his association with Margot reminded Rainham of another
little girl whom he had loved, and whose place she could never even
approximately fill, the memory was not a bitter one, and he was soon
able to listen to her childish questioning without more than a
gentle pang. In time, he even found a dreary transient pleasure in
closing his eyes on the dank dun reality of Blackpool, while the
child discoursed to her doll in the nook of the bow-window, and his
fancy wandered in another sunnier, larger room, with open windows,
and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent snatches from
the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the
balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and
bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint,
colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel,
sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the
dream lasted and recurred: he had always been a dreamer, and every
day found him more forgetful of the present, more familiar with the
past.

Upon his return, rather late, to the dock, he recognised, with a
thrill of pleasure tinged with something of self-reproach, among the
little pile of business letters which Mrs. Bullen brought to him
with his tea-tray, the delicate angular handwriting of Lady Garnett,
and he made haste to possess himself of the secret of the narrow
envelope, of a by-gone fashion, secured with a careful seal.

"MY DEAR" (so she wrote): "This is very absurd; yes, at the ri