on a map, she existed: a widow, in difficulty, keeping a
boarding-house. She ate, slept, struggled; she brushed her hair. He
could see her brushing her hair. And she was thirty-four--was it? The
wonder of the world amazed and shook him. And it appeared to him that
his career was more romantic than ever.

George with dangerous abruptness wriggled his legs downwards and slipped
off the seat of the swing, not waiting for Edwin to stop it. He rolled
on the grass and jumped up in haste. He had had enough.

"Well, want any more?" Edwin asked, breathing hard.

The child made a shy, negative sigh, twisting his tousled head down into
his right shoulder. After all he was not really impudent, brazen. He
could show a delicious timidity. Edwin decided that he was an
enchanting child. He wanted to talk to him, but he could not think of
anything natural and reasonable to say by way of opening.

"You haven't told me your name, you know," he began at length. "How do
I know what your name is? George, yes--but George what? George is
nothing by itself, I know ten million Georges."

The child smiled.

"George Edwin Cannon," he replied shyly.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIVE.

"Now, George!" came Janet's voice, more firmly than before. After all,
she meant in the end to be obeyed. She was learning her business as
aunt to this new and difficult nephew; but learn it she would, and
thoroughly!

"Come on!" Edwin counselled the boy.

They went together to the house. Maggie had found Janet, and the two
were conversing. Soon afterwards aunt and nephew departed.

"How very odd!" murmured Maggie, with an unusual intonation, in the
hall, as Edwin was putting on his hat to return to the shop. But
whether she was speaking to herself or to him, he knew not.

"What?" he asked gruffly.

"Well," she said, "isn't it?"

She was more like Auntie Hamps, more like Clara, than herself in that
moment. He resented the suspicious implications of her tone. He was
about to give her one of his rude, curt rejoinders, but happily he
remembered in time that scarce half an hour earlier he had turned over a
new leaf; so he kept silence. He walked down to the shop in a deep
dream.

VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER THREE.

ADVENTURE.

It was when Edwin fairly reached the platform at Victoria Station and
saw the grandiose express waiting its own moment to start, that the
strange irrational q