h you all Saturday
afternoon, but I don't know whether I shall now. And I'd been thinking
you might like to come and see me on Sunday, but I can't have people
that go to the public-house, so we won't say anything more about it. I
shall have to be off; good-bye!'

She stepped to the door.

'Miss Snowdon!'

Jane turned, and after an instant of mock severity, broke into a laugh
which seemed to fill the wretched den with sunlight. Words, too, she
found; words of soothing influence such as leap from the heart to the
tongue in spite of the heavy thoughts that try to check them. Pennyloaf
was learning to depend upon these words for strength in her desolation.
They did not excite her to much hopefulness, but there was a sustaining
power in their sweet sincerity which made all the difference between
despair tending to evil and the sigh of renewed effort. 'I don't care,'
Pennyloaf had got into the habit of thinking, after her friend's
departure, 'I won't give up as long as she looks in now and then.'

Out from the swarm of babies Jane hurried homewards. She had a reason
for wishing to be back in good time to-night; it was Wednesday, and on
Wednesday evening there was wont to come a visitor, who sat for a
couple of hours in her grandfather's room and talked, talked--the most
interesting talk Jane had ever heard or could imagine. A latch-key
admitted her; she ran up to the second floor. A voice from the
front-room caught her ear; certainly not _his_ voice--it was too
early--but that of some unusual visitor. She was on the point of
entering her own chamber, when the other door opened, and somebody
exclaimed, 'Ah, here she is!'

The speaker was an old gentleman, dressed in black, bald, with small
and rather rugged features; his voice was pleasant. A gold chain and a
bunch of seals shone against his waistcoat, also a pair of eye-glasses.
A professional man, obviously. Jane remembered that she had seen him
once before, about a year ago, when he had talked with her for a few
minutes, very kindly.

'Will you come in here, Jane?' her grandfather's voice called to her.

Snowdon had changed much. Old age was heavy upon his shoulders, and had
even produced a slight tremulousness in his hands; his voice told the
same story of enfeeblement. Even more noticeable was the ageing of his
countenance. Something more, however, than the progress of time seemed
to be here at work. He looked strangely careworn; his forehead was set
in lines of