le to lie there any longer and
watch such a crisp little roll of paper still untorn. He got up, stepped
delicately on to the wide hearth, and pulled the paper towards him with
a little scratching sound. There was a sigh from the bed, and he paused.
Then he lifted it, stepped back to his warm place, lay down, and
placing his paws firmly upon the paper, began to tear scraps out of it
with his white teeth.

"Oh, _be quiet_!" came the weary voice from the bed.

He paused, considered; then he tore two more pieces. But it did not
taste as it should; it was a little sticky, and too stiff. He stood up
once more, turned round four times and lay down with a small grunt.

In the morning the maid who swept up the ashes swept up these fragments
too. She noticed a wet scrap of a picture postcard, with the word
"Selby" printed in the corner. Then she threw that piece, too, into the
dustpan.

CHAPTER IV

(I)

Mrs. Partington and Gertie had many of those mysterious conversations
that such women have, full of "he's" and "she's" and nods and becks and
allusions and broken sentences, wholly unintelligible to the outsider,
yet packed with interest to the talkers. The Major, Mr. Partington
(still absent), and Frank were discussed continually and exhaustively;
and, so far as the subjects themselves ranged, there was hardly an
unimportant detail that did not come under notice, and hardly an
important fact that did. Gertie officially passed, of course, as Mrs.
Trustcott always.

A couple of mornings after Frank had begun his work at the jam factory,
Mrs. Partington, who had stepped round the corner to talk with a friend
for an hour or so, returned to find Gertie raging. She raged in her own
way; she was as white as a sheet; she uttered ironical and
unintelligible sentences, in which Frank's name appeared repeatedly, and
it emerged presently that one of the Mission-ladies had been round
minding other folks' business, and that Gertie would thank that lady to
keep her airs and her advice to herself.

Now Mrs. Partington knew that Gertie was not the Major's wife, and
Gertie knew that she knew it; and Mrs. Partington knew that Gertie knew
that she knew it. Yet, officially, all was perfectly correct; Gertie
wore a wedding-ring, and there never was the hint that she had not a
right to it. It was impossible, therefore, for Mrs. Partington to
observe out loud that she understood perfectly what the Mission-lady had
been talking about.