d had given her coarse, guilty, trembling hand
such a living pressure as it had never before received; a pure, loving
face had looked at her; a voice, which was trembling with earnestness
and full of the pathos of restrained tears, had pleaded with her for her
own child. The woman's dormant motherhood sprung into life. Yes, he was
her own child after all. She did not really want to hurt him, but a sort
of demon was inside her, the demon of drink and sometimes it made her
almost mad. She looked down now with love-cleared eyes at the little
crying child who still clung to her ragged skirt. She stooped and picked
him up, and wrapped a bit of her shawl round him. Presently after a
fearful struggle, she turned away from the public-house and carried the
child home to bed.

The jeering chorus was soon checked, for the shutters were taken down,
and the doors thrown wide, and light, and cheerfulness, and shelter, and
the drink they were all craving for, were temptingly displayed to draw
in the waiting idlers.

But the woman had gone home, and one rather surly looking man still
leaned against the wall looking up the street where Tom and Erica had
disappeared.

"Blowed if that ain't a bit of pluck!" he said to himself, and therewith
fell into a reverie.

Tom talked of temperance work, about which he was very eager, all the
way to Guilford Terrace. Erica, on reaching home, went at once to her
father's room. She found him propped up with pillows in his arm
chair; he was still only well enough to attempt the lightest of light
literature, and was looking at some old volumes of "Punch" which the
Osmonds had sent across.

"You look tired, Eric!" he exclaimed. "Was there a good attendance?"

"Very," she replied, but so much less brightly than usual that Raeburn
at once divined that something had annoyed her.

"Was Mr. Masterman dull?"

"Not dull," she replied, hesitatingly. Then, with more than her usual
vehemence, "Father, I can't endure him! I wish we didn't have such men
on our side! He is so flippant, so vulgar!"

"Of course he never was a model of refinement," said Raeburn, "but he
is effective very effective. It is impossible that you should like
his style; he is, compared with you, what a theatrical poster is to a
delicate tete-de-greuze. How did he specially offend you tonight?"

"It was all hateful from the very beginning," said Erica. "And sprinkled
all through with doubtful jests, which of course pleased the people