r demand for rooms and service at a
pound a week, but to this Warburton demurred. It cost him agonies to
debate such a matter; but, as he knew very well, the price was
excessive for unfurnished lodgings, and need constrained him. He
offered fifteen shillings, and said he would call for Mrs. Wick's
decision on the morrow. The landlady allowed him to go to the foot of
the stairs, then stopped him.

"I wouldn't mind taking fifteen shillings," she said, "if I knew it was
for a permanency."

"I can't bind myself more than by the month."

"Would you be willing to leave a deposit?"

So the matter was settled, and Warburton arranged to enter into
possession that day week.

Without delay the shop repairs were finished, inside and out; orders
for stock were completed; in two days--as a great bill on the shutters
announced--"Jollyman's Grocery Stores" would be open to the public.
Allchin pleaded strongly for the engagement of the brass band; it
wouldn't cost much, and the effect would be immense. Warburton
shrugged, hesitated, gave way, and the band was engaged.

CHAPTER 19

Rosamund Elvan was what ladies call a good correspondent. She wrote
often, she wrote at length, and was satisfied with few or brief letters
in reply. Scarcely had she been a week at Cairo, when some half dozen
sheets of thin paper, covered with her small swift writing, were
dispatched to Bertha Cross, and, thence onwards, about once a fortnight
such a letter arrived at Walham Green. Sitting by a fire kept, for
economical reasons, as low as possible, with her mother's voice
sounding querulously somewhere in the house, and too often a clammy fog
at the window, Bertha read of Egyptian delights and wonders, set
glowingly before her in Rosamund's fluent style. She was glad of the
letters, for they manifested a true affection, and were in every way
more interesting than any others that she received; but at times they
made the cheerless little house seem more cheerless still, and the pang
of contrast between her life and Rosamund's called at such moments for
all Bertha's sense of humour to make it endurable.

Not that Miss Elvan represented herself as happy. In her very first
letter she besought Bertha not to suppose that her appreciation of
strange and beautiful things meant forgetfulness of what must be a
lifelong sorrow. "I am often worse than depressed. I sleep very badly,
and in the night I often shed wretched tears. Though I did only what
con