quiet hints, the fireside circle soon
broke up.

It had been arranged that the whole party should sleep two nights in
town. Geraldine and Audrey had shopping to do, and both Dr. Ross and his
son-in-law had business appointments to detain them. Audrey and her
mother had tea with Michael one evening, and then they bade him and
Kester good-bye.

'You will tell Mollie all about me, will you not, Miss Ross?' Kester
exclaimed excitedly. 'Tell her I am going to St. Paul's, and the
National Gallery, and the British Museum. Fred Somers is going to pilot
me about, as Captain Burnett has so much to do. Do you know Fred Somers,
Miss Ross? He seems a nice sort of fellow.'

Oh yes, Audrey knew all about Fred Somers. He was another _protege_ of
Michael's; indeed, the whole Somers family considered themselves
indebted to Captain Burnett.

Fred's father was only a City clerk, and at one time his head had been
very much below water. He was a good, weak sort of man; but he had not
sufficient backbone, and when the tide sat dead against him he lost
courage.

'The man will die,' said the doctor. 'He has no stamina; he simply
offers no resistance to the disease that is carrying him off. You should
cheer him up a bit, Mrs. Somers--crying never mended a sick man yet.'
For he was the parish doctor, and a little rough in his ways.

'A man has no right to lose courage and to show the white feather when
he has a wife and six children depending on him,' said Michael.

Some chance--or rather say some providential arrangement--had brought
him across their threshold. Michael came across all sorts of people in
his London life, and, though his acquaintance among City clerks was
rather limited, he had known Mr. Somers slightly.

When Michael stepped up to that sick-bed with that wholesome rebuke on
his tongue, but his heart very full of sympathy for the stricken man,
Robert Somers' difficulties were practically over. The debts that were
chafing the life out of him--debts incurred by sickness, by a hundred
little disasters--were paid out of Michael's small means; and, despite
his doctor's prophecy, Robert Somers rose from his bed a braver,
stronger man.

Michael never lost interest in the family. They would always be pinched
and struggling, he knew--a City clerkship is not an El Dorado of riches,
and growing boys and girls have to be clothed and educated. Michael took
the eldest boy, Fred, under his wing--by some means or other he got him
into