ut the pie."

"Oh, very well," said Waller, who was making another plan.

"That's a good boy. Between you and me. Master Waller, Martha's as
nice as nice, but she's just as proud and stuck up about her cooking as
her brother is about being constable. Ring when you have done, please."

Waller nodded, and lifted up the dish-cover, which the girl took from
his hand, and then, nodding pleasantly, hurried out of the room.

The boy's actions the next minute were rather curious, for he followed
to the door, turned the little handle that shot the small bolt into its
socket, and then, after a conspirator-like glance at both the windows,
he went to the bookcase and took down six or eight books from the lower
shelf, to place them on a chair, before he hurried back to the table,
caught up a nice hot plate and a fork, and then transferred half a dozen
out of the eight nicely browned meat buns from the dish, carried the
plate to the opening in the bookshelf, and pushed it as far back as it
would go.

Returning to the table, he paid his next attentions to a little pile of
hot and buttered bread cakes, a kind of food in which Martha excelled.
Taking up a couple of these, one in each hand, he was moving once more
towards the bookcase, but turned back directly.

"Sure to be dusty in there," he muttered; and, turning back to the
table, he deposited the cakes in a plate, which the next minute was
standing beside its fellow in the back of the bookcase.

The boy's next act was to replace the books; but there was not room for
them and the plates, and the consequence was that they projected about a
couple of inches from the edge of the shelf, while when he tried to shut
the glass bookcase door, it too, stood a little way out.

"Don't suppose she will see," he muttered, and, satisfied now with what
he had done, he went and unbolted the dining-room door, and, feeling
very guilty, took his place at the table, poured out his tea, was very
liberal with the sugar and milk, and then helped himself to one of the
two sausage cakes left and a slice of hot bread.

He had got about half-way through Martha's appetising cake and had taken
three good half-moon bites out of a slice of hot bread, thinking deeply
the while, and munching mechanically with his mouth full, but quite
unconscious of the flavour of that which he ate, when the door was
thrown open and Bella entered, making the boy jump and feel more guilty
than ever.

"It's only me, Mast