a cab and rode home ourselves inside a 'bus. My
mother was tired, so my father slipped his arm round her, telling her
to lean against him, and soon she fell asleep with her head upon his
shoulder. A coarse-looking wench sat opposite, her man's arm round her
likewise, and she also fell asleep, her powdered face against his coat.

"They can do with a bit of nursing, can't they?" said the man with a
grin to the conductor.

"Ah, they're just kids," agreed the conductor, sympathetically, "that's
what they are, all of 'em, just kids."

So the day ended. But oh, the emptiness of the morrow! Life without
a crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it!--no comic
uncles, no creamy angels! Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life!
Even my mother at moments was quite irritable.

We were much together again, my father and I, about this time. Often,
making my way from school into the City, I would walk home with him, he
leaning on each occasion a little heavier upon my arm. To this day I can
always meet and walk with him down the Commercial Road. And on Saturday
afternoons, crossing the river to Greenwich, we would climb the hill and
sit there talking, or sometimes merely thinking together, watching the
dim vast city so strangely still and silent at our feet.

At first I did not grasp the fact that he was dying. The "year to two"
of life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become converted in
my mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning; the meanwhile
he himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy. How could I
know it was his great heart rising to his need.

The comprehension came to me suddenly. It was one afternoon in early
spring. I was on my way to the City to meet him. The Holborn Viaduct was
then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence always
much disorganised. The 'bus on which I was riding became entangled in a
block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely
crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful
jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of
physical pain. I jumped from the 'bus and began to run, and the terror
and the hurt of it grew with every step. I ran as if I feared he might
be dead before I could reach the office. He was waiting for me with a
smile as usual, and I flung myself sobbing into his arms.

I think he understood, though I could explain nothing, but that I had
had