s true--it is
true----!"

She was crying. The rain blown on her cheek by the angry wind mingled
with the tears there. She held his wrist--that bony, flat wrist, which
had had its own tale to tell to the examining physician--protruding
from the shabby coat-sleeve, and led him, he nearly unresisting, back
to the door. On the door-step he hesitated, looking at the child with
beseeching dark eyes.

"He's awfully busy--his room's full--he isn't the sort to take
liberties with--I don't want to bother him again."

But she kept a relentless hold upon the wrist, and herself rang the
bell, and when the door opened, pushed him within with remorseless
urgency. "Never mind cringing," she whispered. "Tell him everything.
Tell him how they treat you at home. Don't mind what he thinks."

So, in Peter went, and Cicely, her school-books tucked away under her
arm for the protection afforded by her mackintosh, the rain coming on
faster and faster, walked the pavement, or waited on the doorstep, and
now and again crossed the road in the baseless hope that she might not
find the other side so wet, for a miserable two hours.

"Why, I thought I had finished with you, sir, more than an hour ago,"
the physician said, looking up, not too well pleased, when Peter,
nervously smiling, his dark-curled head with its pale Jewish features
pushed well forward, appeared in the consulting-room again.

The doctor, a fine-looking, red-faced man with keen blue eyes, looked a
giant of health and strength and well-being beside the slight and
meagre form. He was physician to the great firm of Clomayne, Company,
Limited, who never appointed a clerk to their offices without a
favourable report from him. Peter had already passed the educational
test by which they weeded out the applicants to fill their vacancies.
As a typist he had proved himself expert; in shorthand he had attained
the highest speed. Nothing but the medical examination stood between
him and the office-stool, which to him was as much an object of desire
as is a throne to a prince.

"I think, sir," he said, his eyes, very dark and softly luminous, on
the doctor's face,--"I'm afraid you didn't form a very high opinion of
my physique. I wanted to ask you--I wanted to beg you, sir, to pass me.
It would be the making of me, sir, to get to Clomayne's. I've been
trying for more than a year to get a clerkship. The market is so very
full, and I've been unfortunate. This is a great chance for me. I h