reless room,
with a cheerful, brown face, whistling a tune. In the adjoining room, he
could hear his wife's voice raised shrilly, and the cries of half a
dozen Legards. He was used to it, and it did not disturb him; and he
painted and whistled cheerily, touching up the butcher's daughter's snub
nose and fat cheeks, and double chin, until light footsteps came running
up stairs, and the door was flung wide by an impetuous hand. A boy of
ten, or thereabouts, came in--a bright-eyed, fair-haired lad, with a
handsome, resolute face, and eyes of cloudless, Saxon blue.

"Ah, Guy!" said the scene-painter, turning round and nodding
good-humoredly. "I've been expecting you. What do you think of Miss
Jenkins?"

The boy looked at the picture with the glance of an embryo connoisseur.

"It's as like her as two peas, Joe; or would be, if her hair was a
little redder, and her nose a little thicker, and the freckles were
plainer. But it looks like her as it is."

"Well, you see Guy," said the painter, going on with Miss Jenkins' left
eyebrow, "it don't do to make 'em too true--people don't like it; they
pay their money, and they expect to take it out in good looks. And now,
any news this morning, Guy?"

The boy leaned against the window and looked out into the dingy street,
his bright young face growing gloomy and overcast.

"No," he said, moodily; "there is no news, except that Phil Darking was
drunk last night, and savage as a mad dog this morning--and that's no
news, I'm sure."

"And nobody's come about the advertisement in the _Times_?"

"No, and never will. It's all humbug what granny says about my belonging
to anybody rich; if I did, they'd have seen after me long ago. Phil says
my mother was a housemaid, and my father a valet--and they were only too
glad to get me off their hands. Vyking was a valet, granny says she
knows; and it's not likely he'll turn up after all these years. I don't
care, I'd rather go to the work-house; I'd rather starve in the streets,
than live another week with Phil Darking."

The blue eyes filled with tears, and he dashed them passionately away.
The painter looked up with a distressed face.

"Has he been beating you again, Guy?"

"It's no matter--he's a brute. Granny and Ellen are sorry, and do what
they can; but that's nothing. I wish I had never been born."

"It is hard," said the painter, compassionately, "but keep up heart,
Guy; if the worst comes, why you can stop here and take pot-luck