rs with Mrs. Chinnery, and if she don't
find that you've got that glue-pot concealed on you, I shall be very
much surprised. Why not own up the truth before you scald yourself?"

Instead of going upstairs the charwoman went to the back door and sat on
the step to get her breath, and, giving way to a sense of humour which
had survived the two husbands and eleven children, wound up with a
strong fit of hysterics. Captain Sellers, who watched through the window
as she was being taken away, said that perhaps it was his fault for
putting temptation in her way.

Mrs. Chinnery tried to keep her door fast next morning, but it was of
no use. The captain was in and out all day, and, having found a tin of
green paint and a brush among his stores, required constant watching.
The day after Mrs. Chinnery saw her only means of escape, and at nine
o'clock in the morning, with fair words and kind smiles, sent him into
Salthaven for some picture-cord. He made four journeys that day. He came
back from the last in a butcher's cart, and having handed Mrs. Chinnery
the packet of hooks and eyes, for which he had taken a month's wear out
of his right leg, bade her a hurried good-night and left for home on the
arm of the butcher.

He spent the next day or two in an easy-chair by the fire, but the
arrival of Mrs. Willett to complete the furnishing of No. 5 from her
own surplus stock put him on his legs again. As an old neighbour and
intimate friend of Mr. Truefitt's he proffered his services, and Mrs.
Willett, who had an old-fashioned belief in "man," accepted them. His
one idea--the pot of paint being to him like a penny in a schoolboy's
pocket--was to touch things up a bit; Mrs. Willett's idea was for him to
help hang pictures and curtains.

"The steps are so rickety they are only fit for a man," she screamed in
his ear. "Martha has been over with them twice already."

Captain Sellers again referred to the touching-up properties of green
paint. Mrs. Willett took it from him, apparently for the purpose of
inspection, and he at once set out in search of the glue-pot.

"We'll do the curtains downstairs first," she said to Martha. "Upstairs
can wait."

The captain spent the morning on the steps, his difficulties being by no
means lessened by the _tremolo_ movement which Martha called steadying
them. Twice he was nearly shaken from his perch like an over-ripe plum,
but all went well until they were hanging the curtains in the best
bed-room,