here's father close to
us, Mr. Chandler. Tell me quick; what is it?"

"Well, I take it, by what you said just now, that you've never
walked out with any young fellow?"

Daisy hesitated a moment; then a very pretty dimple came into her
cheek. "No," she said sadly. "No, Mr. Chandler, that I have not."
In a burst of candour she added, "You see, I never had the chance!"

And Joe Chandler smiled, well pleased.

CHAPTER X

By what she regarded as a fortunate chance, Mrs. Bunting found
herself for close on an hour quite alone in the house during her
husband's and Daisy's jaunt with young Chandler.

Mr. Sleuth did not often go out in the daytime, but on this
particular afternoon, after he had finished his tea, when dusk was
falling, he suddenly observed that he wanted a new suit of clothes,
and his landlady eagerly acquiesced in his going out to purchase it.

As soon as he had left the house, she went quickly up to the
drawing-room floor. Now had come her opportunity of giving the two
rooms a good dusting; but Mrs. Bunting knew well, deep in her heart,
that it was not so much the dusting of Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room she
wanted to do--as to engage in a vague search for--she hardly knew
for what.

During the years she had been in service Mrs. Bunting had always
had a deep, wordless contempt for those of her fellow-servants who
read their employers' private letters, and who furtively peeped
into desks and cupboards in the hope, more vague than positive, of
discovering family skeletons.

But now, with regard to Mr. Sleuth, she was ready, aye, eager, to
do herself what she had once so scorned others for doing.

Beginning with the bedroom, she started on a methodical search. He
was a very tidy gentleman was the lodger, and his few things,
under-garments, and so on, were in apple-pie order. She had early
undertaken, much to his satisfaction, to do the very little bit of
washing he required done, with her own and Bunting's. Luckily he
wore soft shirts.

At one time Mrs. Bunting had always had a woman in to help her with
this tiresome weekly job, but lately she had grown quite clever at
it herself. The only things she had to send out were Bunting's
shirts. Everything else she managed to do herself.

From the chest of drawers she now turned her attention to the
dressing-table.

Mr. Sleuth did not take his money with him when he went out, he
generally left it in one of the drawers below the old-fashioned
looking-gla