dly
in the hope of finding one of the children there, but he met only the
embarrassed face of Roberts. Inviting him into the room, the editor
continued dressing. Carefully closing the door behind him, the man
began, with evident hesitation,--

"I oughter hev told ye suthin' afore, Mr. Breeze; but I kalkilated, so
to speak, that you wouldn't be bothered one way or another, and so ye
hadn't any call to know that there was folks here"--

"Oh, I see," interrupted Breeze cheerfully; "you're speaking of the
family next door--the landlord's new tenants."

"They ain't exactly THAT," said Roberts, still with embarrassment. "The
fact is--ye see--the thing points THIS way: they ain't no right to be
here, and it's as much as my place is worth if it leaks out that they
are."

Mr. Breeze suspended his collar-buttoning, and stared at Roberts.

"You see, sir, they're mighty poor, and they've nowhere else to go--and
I reckoned to take 'em in here for a spell and say nothing about it."

"But the landlord wouldn't object, surely? I'll speak to him myself,"
said Breeze impulsively.

"Oh, no; don't!" said Roberts in alarm; "he wouldn't like it. You see,
Mr. Breeze, it's just this way: the mother, she's a born lady, and did
my old woman a good turn in old times when the family was rich; but now
she's obliged--just to support herself, you know--to take up with what
she gets, and she acts in the bally in the theatre, you see, and hez
to come in late o' nights. In them cheap boarding-houses, you know, the
folks looks down upon her for that, and won't hev her, and in the cheap
hotels the men are--you know--a darned sight wuss, and that's how I took
her and her kids in here, where no one knows 'em."

"I see," nodded the editor sympathetically; "and very good it was of
you, my man."

Roberts looked still more confused, and stammered with a forced laugh,
"And--so--I'm just keeping her on here, unbeknownst, until her husband
gets"--He stopped suddenly.

"So she has a husband living, then?" said Breeze in surprise.

"In the mines, yes--in the mines!" repeated Roberts with a monotonous
deliberation quite distinct from his previous hesitation, "and she's
only waitin' until he gets money enough--to--to take her away." He
stopped and breathed hard.

"But couldn't you--couldn't WE--get her some more furniture? There's
nothing in that room, you know, not a chair or table; and unless the
other room is better furnished"--

"Eh? Oh, yes!" sai