dge and married him. Her casual but proud-minded family
wiped her off the proud family slate. She brought Phyllis into the
world and five years afterwards found herself be-Gedged out of
existence. They were struggling people in those days, and before her
death my wife used to employ her, when she could, for household sewing
and whatnot. And tiny Phyllis, in a childless home, became a petted
darling. When my great loneliness came upon me, it was a solace to have
the little dainty prattling thing to spend an occasional hour in my
company. Gedge, an excellent workman, set up as a contractor. He took
my modest home under his charge. A leaky tap, a broken pane, a new set
of bookshelves, a faulty drainpipe--all were matters for Gedge. I
abhorred his politics but I admired his work, and I continued, with
Mrs. Marigold's motherly aid, to make much of Phyllis.

Gedge, for queer motives of his own, sent her to as good a school as he
could afford, as a matter of fact an excellent school, one where she
met girls of a superior social class and learned educated speech and
graceful manners. Her holidays, poor child, were somewhat dreary, for
her father, an anti-social creature, had scarce a friend in the town.
Save for here and there an invitation to tea from Betty or myself, she
did not cross the threshold of a house in Wellingsford. But to my
house, all through her schooldays and afterwards, Phyllis came, and on
such occasions Mrs. Marigold prepared teas of the organic lusciousness
dear to the heart of a healthy girl.

Now, here comes the point of all this palaver. Young Master Randall
used also to come to my house. Now and then by chance they met there.
They were good boy and girl friends.

I want to make it absolutely clear that her acquaintance with Randall
was not any vulgar picking-up-in-the-street affair.

When she left school, her father made her his book-keeper, secretary,
confidential clerk. Anybody turning into the office to summon Gedge to
repair a roof or a burst boiler had a preliminary interview with
Phyllis. Young Randall, taking over the business of the upkeep of his
mother's house, gradually acquired the habit of such preliminary
interviews. The whole imbroglio was very simple, very natural. They had
first met at my own rich cake and jam-puff bespread tea-table. When
Randall went into the office to speak, presumably, about a defective
draught in the kitchen range, and really about things quite different,
the eth