d with a hand upon his chair. Bertha, turning back from
the door, passed by him, and resumed her seat.

"A very clever girl," she said, with a glance at the window.

"Very, no doubt," said Will, glancing the same way.

"Won't you sit down?"

"Gladly, if you don't think I am staying too long. I had something I
wanted to talk about. That was why I felt glum when I came in and found
a stranger here. It's such a long time since I had any part in ordinary
society, that I'm forgetting how to behave myself."

"I must apologise for you to Miss Medwin, when I see her next," said
Bertha, with drollery in her eyes.

"She will understand if you tell her I'm only a grocer," remarked Will,
looking at a point above her head.

"That might complicate things."

"Do you know," resumed Warburton. "I feel sure that the Franks will
never again invite me to lunch or dine there. Franks is very careful
when he asks me to go and see them; he always adds that they'll be
alone--quite alone."

"But that's a privilege."

"So it may be taken; but would it surprise you if they really preferred
to see as little of me as possible?"

Bertha hesitated, smiling, and said at length with a certain
good-humoured irony:

"I think I should understand."

"So do I, quite," exclaimed Will, laughing. "I wanted to tell you that
I've been looking about me, trying to find some way of getting out of
the shop. It isn't so easy. I might get a clerkship at a couple of
pounds a week, but that doesn't strike me as preferable to my present
position. I've been corresponding with Applegarth, the jam
manufacturer, and he very strongly advises me to stick to trade. I'm
not sure that he isn't right."

There was silence. Each sat with drooping eyes.

"Do you know," Warburton then asked, "why I turned grocer?"

"Yes."

"It was a fortunate idea. I don't see how else I should have made
enough money, these three years, to pay the income I owed to my mother
and sister, and to support myself. Since my mother's death--"

Her look arrested him.

"I am forgetting that you could not have known of that. She died last
autumn; by my father's will, our old house, at St. Neots then became
mine; it's let; the rent goes to my sister, and out of the shop profits
I easily make up what her own part of the lost capital used to yield.
Jane is going in for horticulture, making a business of what was always
her chief pleasure, and before long she may be independent; but it
would