ck and finds him here, there'll be a
scene."

Miss Templeton and Gladys consulted together for some minutes, and
then decided to send for a taxi and have Shiel conveyed back to his
rooms, Miss Templeton accompanying him.

Miss Templeton knew that Shiel was poor, but like most people who have
lived in comfortable surroundings all their lives, she had no idea of
what poverty was like--the poverty of a seven-and-sixpenny a week room
in a back street; and when she saw it she nearly swooned.

"Why this is a slum!" she ejaculated as the taxi stopped next door to
a fried fish shop in a narrow street swarming with children sucking
bread and jam, and rolling each other over in the gutters.

"I don't wonder the man is ill here!" she said to herself, as the door
of the house they stopped at opened and she snuffed the atmosphere.
"The place reeks--and--oh! gracious! is this the landlady?"

Yet the woman was ordinary enough--the type of landlady one sees in
all back streets--greasy face, straggling hair, dirty blouse, black
hands, bitten fingernails, short skirts, prodigious feet, a grubby
child clinging on to her dress and every indication of the speedy
arrival of another.

"I suppose you're 'is mother hain't you, mum?" she said, gaping at
Miss Templeton's rather fashionable clothes in open-mouthed wonder. "I
told 'im 'ee ought not to go out, but 'ee never 'eeds what I says."

Miss Templeton, though not particularly flattered at being taken for
Shiel's mother--since, like most ladies of mature age, she wished to
be regarded as much younger--nevertheless, thought it better not to
disillusion the woman. The poor, she told herself, often have very
decided views on propriety. With the woman's aid she got Shiel
upstairs, and, as he was too feeble to undress himself, despite his
protestations, helped to disrobe him. She had thought, when she first
saw the slum, of returning to Kew at once, but she did no such thing.
She stayed with Shiel; persuaded the landlady to make him some gruel
(which proved to be a sorry mess, but had at least the advantage of
being hot), and bribed one of the children to fetch the doctor. Shiel
nearly died. Had it not been for the careful nursing and good food
provided by Miss Templeton, who visited him every day, he would never
have turned the corner.

"The poor boy is terribly fond of you," Miss Templeton said to Gladys.
"In his delirium he talked of nothing but saving you from Leon
Hamar--from that d