g he
would go that afternoon.

"Not when I have visitors," replied Baumgartner, with a smiling bow. "And
I look upon my patients in that light," he added, with benevolent but
futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more so than if
she had still believed it to be the truth.

Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece took
refuge at her piano, and this time Pocket hung over her for an hour or
more. He went through her music, and asked for everything that Lettice
played or sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the makings
of a pianist. The boy's enthusiasm for the things he knew made her play
then as well as ever he had heard them played. Even the doctor, dozing in
the big chair with eyes that were never quite shut, murmured his approval
more than once; he loved his Mendelssohn and Schubert, and had nothing to
say against the Sousas and others that the boy picked out as well, and
mentioned with ingenuous fervour in the same breath. Pocket would have
sung himself if the doctor had not been there, for he had a bit of a voice
when he was free from asthma; and once or twice he stopped listening to
wonder at himself. Could he be the boy who had killed a man, however
innocently, three days before! Could it be he whom the police might come
and carry off to prison at any moment? Was it true that he might never
see his own people any more? Such questions appalled and stunned him; he
could neither answer them nor realise their full import. They turned the
old man in the chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he
had seemed at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and
excitement even to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.

Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home.
Of course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something would
be done at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his for ever;
but as for his present situation, there were moments when Pocket felt
rather like a story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned, and already in
communication with the mainland.

He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had
come straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be within
a mile of that very room at that very moment. Would all the known
circumstances of his disappearance be published broadcast in the papers?
Pocket felt he would have red