thought she'd have felt it more. But you never know. A good thing if
she doesn't, really."

Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost
was dead. She did not feel herself implicated.

The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The
will was found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing
a wish that Alvina should have everything. Alvina herself told the
verbal requests. All was quietly fulfilled.

As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just
sixty-three pounds in the bank--no more: then the clothes, piano,
books and music. Miss Frost's brother had these latter, at his own
request: the books and music, and the piano. Alvina inherited the
few simple trinkets, and about forty-five pounds in money.

"Poor Miss Frost," cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly--"she
saved nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow
old, so that she couldn't work. You can see. It's a shame, it's a
shame, one of the best women that ever trod earth."

Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker
gloom. Miss Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went
out of the house. It seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And
Alvina and Miss Pinnegar might move about and talk in vain. They
could never remove the sense of waiting to finish: it was all just
waiting to finish. And the three, James and Alvina and Miss
Pinnegar, waited lingering through the months, for the house to come
to an end. With Miss Frost its spirit passed away: it was no more.
Dark, empty-feeling, it seemed all the time like a house just before
a sale.

CHAPTER V

THE BEAU

Throttle-Ha'penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the
spring broke down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic,
childish look which touched the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar.
They began to treat him with a certain feminine indulgence, as he
fluttered round, agitated and bewildered. He was like a bird that
has flown into a room and is exhausted, enfeebled by its attempts to
fly through the false freedom of the window-glass. Sometimes he
would sit moping in a corner, with his head under his wing. But Miss
Pinnegar chased him forth, like the stealthy cat she was, chased him
up to the work-room to consider some detail of work, chased him into
the shop to turn over the old debris of the stock. At one time he
showed the alarming symptom of brooding over his wife's de