urned his visitor's greeting awkwardly, much wondering.

'Could I have a few words with you?' Egremont asked. 'I have come on
Mrs. Ormonde's behalf--the lady at the Eastbourne home, you know. I
have a message about your little girl.'

'Something happened?' Bunce inquired, in a startled voice.

'No, no; good news, if anything.'

Bunce did not willingly invite Egremont into his poor room, but he felt
that he had no choice. He just said: 'Will you come upstairs, sir?' and
led the way.

The two children were playing together on the floor; Bunce had been on
the point of putting Nelly to bed. In spite of his mood, natural
kindness so far prevailed with Egremont that he bent and touched the
child's curls. Bunce, with set lips, stood watching; he saw that
Egremont had not so much as cast an eye round the room, and that,
together with the attention to his child, softened his naturally
suspicious frame of mind.

'It's better than coming back to an empty room every night?' Egremont
said, looking at the man.

'Yes, sir, it's better--though I don't always think so.'

'These two keep well?'

'Fairly well.'

'There's never nothing the matter with me!' exclaimed young Jack, bluff
though shamefaced.

'Nothing except your grammar, you mean, Jack,' replied his father.
'Will you just sit down, sir? I was afraid at first there was something
wrong, when you mentioned Mrs. Ormonde.'

Egremont reassured him, and went on to say that Mrs. Ormonde was
anxious to see him personally whilst she was in town. He felt it would
be better not to explain the nature of the proposal Mrs. Ormonde was
going to make, and affected to know nothing more than that she wished
to speak of the child's health. Bunce had knitted his brows; his heavy
lips took on a fretful sullenness. He knew that it was impossible to
meet Egremont with flat refusals, and the prospect of being driven into
something he intensely disliked worked him into an inward fume. He gave
a great scrape on the floor with one of his heels as if he would have
ploughed a track in the boards.

'I'm sorry,' he began, 'I've got no free time worth speaking of. I'm
much obliged to the lady. But I don't see how I'm to--'

He wanted to blunder out words of angry impatience; his rising choler
brought him to a full stop in the middle of the sentence.

Egremont addressed himself in earnest to the task persuasion. More was
involved than mere benefit to the child's health; it was easy to see
th