atchgrew women (the wife of another grandson) and three little
girls of various sizes flash in succession across an open doorway at
the back. The granddaughter-in-law, who had an abode full of costly
wedding-presents over the shop, had been one of her callers, but when
they flashed across that doorway the Batchgrew women made a point of
ignoring all phenomena in the shop.

"Has Louis decided about them debentures?" Thomas Batchgrew asked,
still in a very low and confidential tone, as the two stood together
in the corner. He had put the Book and the parcel down on a very
ragged blotting-pad that lay on a chipped and ink-stained deal desk,
and began to finger a yellow penholder. There was nobody else in the
shop.

Rachel had foreseen his question.

She answered calmly: "Yes. He's quite decided that on the whole it'll
be better if he doesn't put his money into debentures."

There was no foundation whatever for this statement; yet, in
uttering the lie, she was clearly conscious of a feeling of lofty
righteousness. She faced Thomas Batchgrew, though not with a
tranquillity perfectly maintained, and she still enjoyed his
appreciation of her, but she did not seem to care whether he guessed
that she was lying or not.

"I'm sorry, lass!" he said simply, sniffing. "The lad's a fool. It
isn't as if I've got to go hawking seven per cent. debentures to get
rid of 'em--and in a concern like that, too! They'd never ha' been
seven per cent if it hadna been for me. But it was you as I was
thinking of when I offered 'em to Louis. I thought I should be doing
ye a good turn."

The old man smiled amid his loud sniffs. He was too old to have
retained any save an artistic interest in women. But an artistic
interest in them he certainly had; and at an earlier period he had
acquainted himself with life, as his eye showed. Rachel blushed a
third time that morning, and more deeply than before. He was seriously
nattering her now. Endearing qualities that had expired in him long
ago seemed to be resuscitated and to animate his ruined features.
Rachel dimly understood how it was that some woman had once married
him and borne him a lot of children, and how it was that he had been
so intimate and valued a friend of the revered husband of such a woman
as Mrs. Maldon. She was, in the Five Towns phrase, "flustered." She
almost believed what Thomas Batchgrew had said. She did believe it.
She had misjudged him on the Thursday night when he spread t