rt Nemesis if by chance they have let slip a
boastful word. Once he laughed outright, wildly, at nothing whatever.

Nuncey set down the teapot and eyed her parent with a puzzled frown.
That frown had sat too often on her cheerful face during the past three
months. In truth, Mr. Benny as a regrater fell disastrously short of
success, being prone to sell at monstrous overweights, which ate up the
profits. When Nuncey at length forbade him to touch the scales, he gave
away apples to every child that chose to edge around the tail of the cart.

"There's something wrong with father to-night," she said. "He's like a
thing hurried-in-mind. What's up with 'ee, my dear?--is it verses?"
She paused with a sudden dark suspicion. "I see'd William Badgery walkin'
after you down the street. Don't tell me you've let 'en persuade you into
buying that lot of eggs he was preachin' up for fresh? for, if you have, I
get no shoes this Christmas--that's all. Fresh? He've been salting them
down these three months, against the Christmas prices, and no size in 'em
to start with. I wouldn't sell 'em for sixpence the dozen."

"Shoes?" Good Lord, what a question these boots and shoes had been for
all these years! Never a Saturday came round (it seemed to him) but one
or other of the family wanted soleing or heeling. And henceforth they
could all have shoes to their heart's content--and frocks--and new suits--
and meat on the table without stint--

He set down his cup and rose hurriedly. In the act of pushing back his
chair he met his wife's eyes. They were watching him with anxious
concern--not with apparent love; but he alone knew what love lay behind
that look which once or twice of late he had surprised in them.
His own filled with sudden tears. No, he could not tell her now.
To-night, perhaps, when he and she were alone, he would tell her, as so
often he had told his worries and listened to hers. He dashed his frayed
cuff across his eyes and fairly bolted from the room.

"It's about Nicky Vro that he's troublin'," said Mrs. Benny.
"Terrible soft-hearted he is; but you ought to know your father better by
this time than to upset 'en so."

An hour later word came to Hester--it was Shake who brought it--that Mr.
Benny would be glad to see her in the office. She obeyed at once, albeit
with some trepidation when she came to mount the steps and tap at the
door. She had learnt, however, from Nuncey that certain nights were set