own
the yard.

* * * * *

Mike's _debut_ was as great a success as so small a part could make it;
and the main point about it was the excitement of knowing that this was
an actual beginning. He had made them all laugh and cry in drawing-rooms
for ever so long; but to-night he was on the stage, the real
stage--real, at all events, for him, for Mike could never be an
amateur. Esther's eyes filled with glad tears as the well-loved little
figure popped in, with a baker's paper hat on his head, and delivered
the absurd words; and if you had looked at Henry's face too, you would
have been at a loss to know which loved the little pastry-cook's
boy best.

When Mike returned to his dressing-room, a mysterious box was awaiting
him. He opened it, and found Esther's wreath and Henry's sonnet.

"God bless them," he said.

No doubt it was very childish and sentimental, and old-fashioned; but
these young people certainly loved each other.

As Mike had left the stage, Henry had turned round and smiled at some
one a few seats away. Esther had noticed him, and looked in the same
direction.

"Who was that you bowed to, Henry?"

"I'll tell you another time," he said; for he had a good deal to tell
her about Angel Flower.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MOTHER OF AN ANGEL

The Man in Possession was becoming more and more a favourite at Mr.
Flower's. One day Mr. Flower, taking pity on his loneliness, suggested
that he might possibly prefer to have his lunch in company with them all
down at the house. Henry gladly embraced the proposal, and thus became
the daily honoured guest of a family, each member of which had some
simple human attraction for him. He had already won the heart of simple
Mrs. Flower, few and brief as had been his encounters with her, and that
heart she had several times coined in unexpected cakes and other
dainties of her own making; but when he thus became partially domiciled
with the family, she was his slave outright. There was a reason for
this, which will need, and may perhaps excuse, a few lines entirely
devoted to Mrs. Flower, who, on her own peculiar merits, deserves them.

Perhaps to introduce Eliza Flower in this way is to take her more
seriously than any of her affectionate acquaintance were able to do.
For, somehow, people had a bad habit of laughing at Mrs. Flower, though
they admitted she was the hardest-working, best-hearted little housewife
in the world. Housewife