, and confronting them as she held its
handle stood a small old woman with an astonishing face. It was
astonishing because while it was withered and wrinkled with marks of
past years which had once stamped their reckless unsavoriness upon its
every line, some strange redeeming thing had happened to it and its
expression was that of a creature to whom the opening of a door could
only mean the entrance--the tumbling in as it were--of hopes realized.
Its surface was swept clean of even the vaguest anticipation of anything
not to be desired. Smiling as it did through the black doorway into the
unrelieved shadow of the passage, it struck Antony Dart at once that it
actually implied this--and that in this place--and indeed in any
place--nothing could have been more astonishing. What could, indeed?

"Well, well," she said, "come in, Glad, bless yer."

"I've brought a gent to 'ear yer talk a bit," Glad explained informally.

The small old woman raised her twinkling old face to look at him.

"Ah!" she said, as if summing up what was before her. "'E thinks it's
worse than it is, doesn't 'e, now? Come in, sir, do."

This time it struck Dart that her look seemed actually to anticipate the
evolving of some wonderful and desirable thing from himself. As if even
his gloom carried with it treasure as yet undisplayed. As she knew
nothing of the ten sovereigns, he wondered what, in God's name, she saw.

The poverty of the little square room had an odd cheer in it. Much
scrubbing had removed from it the objections manifest in Glad's room
above. There was a small red fire in the grate, a strip of old, but gay
carpet before it, two chairs and a table were covered with a harlequin
patchwork made of bright odds and ends of all sizes and shapes. The fog
in all its murky volume could not quite obscure the brightness of the
often rubbed window and its harlequin curtain drawn across upon a
string.

"Bless yer," said Miss Montaubyn, "sit down."

Dart sat and thanked her. Glad dropped upon the floor and girdled her
knees comfortably while Miss Montaubyn took the second chair, which was
close to the table, and snuffed the candle which stood near a basket of
colored scraps such as, without doubt, had made the harlequin curtain.

"Yer won't mind me goin' on with me bit o' work?" she chirped.

"Tell 'im wot it is," Glad suggested.

"They come from a dressmaker as is in a small way," designating the
scraps by a gesture. "I clean up