the corridors, in silence. What was there for her to say?
She was obliged to go and see Mr. Craven and he would not like her, and
she would not like him. She knew what he would think of her.

She was taken to a part of the house she had not been into before. At
last Mrs. Medlock knocked at a door, and when some one said, "Come in,"
they entered the room together. A man was sitting in an armchair
before the fire, and Mrs. Medlock spoke to him.

"This is Miss Mary, sir," she said.

"You can go and leave her here. I will ring for you when I want you to
take her away," said Mr. Craven.

When she went out and closed the door, Mary could only stand waiting, a
plain little thing, twisting her thin hands together. She could see
that the man in the chair was not so much a hunchback as a man with
high, rather crooked shoulders, and he had black hair streaked with
white. He turned his head over his high shoulders and spoke to her.

"Come here!" he said.

Mary went to him.

He was not ugly. His face would have been handsome if it had not been
so miserable. He looked as if the sight of her worried and fretted him
and as if he did not know what in the world to do with her.

"Are you well?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Mary.

"Do they take good care of you?"

"Yes."

He rubbed his forehead fretfully as he looked her over.

"You are very thin," he said.

"I am getting fatter," Mary answered in what she knew was her stiffest
way.

What an unhappy face he had! His black eyes seemed as if they scarcely
saw her, as if they were seeing something else, and he could hardly
keep his thoughts upon her.

"I forgot you," he said. "How could I remember you? I intended to send
you a governess or a nurse, or some one of that sort, but I forgot."

"Please," began Mary. "Please--" and then the lump in her throat
choked her.

"What do you want to say?" he inquired.

"I am--I am too big for a nurse," said Mary. "And please--please don't
make me have a governess yet."

He rubbed his forehead again and stared at her.

"That was what the Sowerby woman said," he muttered absentmindedly.

Then Mary gathered a scrap of courage.

"Is she--is she Martha's mother?" she stammered.

"Yes, I think so," he replied.

"She knows about children," said Mary. "She has twelve. She knows."

He seemed to rouse himself.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to play out of doors," Mary answered, hoping that her voice did
not tr