? I remember how
you hated her! You wouldn't admit that she was a mother of any sort."

"No. I don't know what became of her. I never saw her again after that
night. I think she went to live with her own people. Christine took
care of me."

"I don't remember Christine. I don't think you ever told me about her."

"I wouldn't have known how to explain. I don't know now. She was a sort
of friend--my father's and mother's friend. There was an understanding
between her and my mother--a promise--I don't know what. So she took me
away with her. Not that she had any money, either. We went to live in
two rooms in the suburbs, and she worked for us both. She had never
worked before--not for money--and she wasn't young. But she did it."

"A great sort of friend. And she came through too----?"

He did not answer at once, and he felt her look at him quickly,
anxiously, as though she had felt him shrink back into himself. She
heard something in his silence that he did not want her to hear. He put
his head down to the wind again, hiding a white, hard face.

"Oh, yes, and we still live in two rooms--over a garage in Drayton Mews.
My room 'folds up' in the day-time, and she sits there and knits woollen
things for the shops. She has to take life easily now. She had an
illness, and her eyes trouble her. But she's better--much better. And
next year everything will be different."

The street had run out into the still shadows of a great dim square. For
a moment they hesitated like travellers on the verge of unknown country;
then Francey crossed over to the iron-palinged garden and they walked on
side by side under the trees that rattled their grimy, fleshless limbs in
an eerie dance. There was no one else stirring. The eyes of the stately
Georgian houses were already closed in the weariness of their sad old age.

But she asked no questions. She seemed to have drifted away from him on
a secret journey of her own. He had to draw her back--make her
realize----

"I shall be a doctor then," he said challengingly.

"You said you would be a doctor. We quarrelled about it."

"How you remember things----"

"You were such a strange little boy. Besides, you remember them too."

"That's different. I've never had anyone else----" He caught himself
up. "I suppose you think I'm still bragging?"

"You never bragged. You always did what you said you were going to
do--even stupid things, like climbing that old