now?" was her observation;
"who hasn't got a husband?"

"Why, mamma."

"Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a
husband."

"No, she ain't."

"And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives in
London."

"What's the good of _him_!"

Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.

"You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is in
London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit
there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be such an
ungrateful little brat."

I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repetition of
a conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my
aunt.

Had said my aunt: "There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I saw
such a thing to mope as a woman."

My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled all
day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.

My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite
attitude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the garden
beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the white and
yellow crocuses decking the grass.

"I want a husband," had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously
childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I was
reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; "I hate
not having a husband."

"Help us and save us," my aunt had retorted; "how many more does a girl
want? She's got one."

"What's the good of him all that way off," had pouted my mother; "I want
him here where I can get at him."

I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in
London, and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish
endeavours to square information with reflection had resulted in my
assigning to him an entirely spiritual existence. I agreed with my
mother that such an one, however to be revered, was no substitute for
the flesh and blood father possessed by luckier folk--the big, strong,
masculine thing that would carry a fellow pig-a-back round the garden,
or take a chap to sail in boats.

"You don't understand me, nurse," I explained; "what I mean is a husband
you can get at."

"Well, and you'll 'get at him,' poor gentleman, one of these days,"
answered Mrs. Fursey. "When he's ready for you he'll send for you, and
then you'll go to him in London."

I felt that stil