her family; there was a mother who had
specialized in ill-health, a sister of defective ability who stayed at
home, a brother in South Africa who was very good and sent home money,
and three younger sisters growing up. And father,--she evaded the
subject of father at first. Then presently Lady Harman had some glimpses
of an earlier phase in Susan Burnet's life "before any of us were
earning money." Father appeared as a kindly, ineffectual, insolvent
figure struggling to conduct a baker's and confectioner's business in
Walthamstow, mother was already specializing, there were various
brothers and sisters being born and dying. "How many were there of you
altogether?" asked Lady Harman.

"Thirteen there was. Father always used to laugh and say he'd had a fair
baker's dozen. There was Luke to begin with----"

Susan began to count on her fingers and recite braces of scriptural
names.

She could only make up her tale to twelve. She became perplexed. Then
she remembered. "Of course!" she cried: "there was Nicodemus. He was
still-born. I _always_ forget Nicodemus, poor little chap! But he
came--was it sixth or seventh?--seventh after Anna."

She gave some glimpses of her father and then there was a collapse of
which she fought shy. Lady Harman was too delicate to press her to talk
of that.

But one day in the afternoon Susan's tongue ran.

She was telling how first she went to work before she was twelve.

"But I thought the board schools----" said Lady Harman.

"I had to go before the committee," said Susan. "I had to go before the
committee and ask to be let go to work. There they was, sitting round a
table in a great big room, and they was as kind as anything, one old
gentleman with a great white beard, he was as kind as could be. 'Don't
you be frightened, my dear,' he says. 'You tell us why you want to go
out working.' 'Well,' I says, '_somebody's_ got to earn something,' and
that made them laugh in a sort of fatherly way, and after that there
wasn't any difficulty. You see it was after Father's Inquest, and
everybody was disposed to be kind to us. 'Pity they can't all go
instead of this educational Tommy Rot,' the old gentleman says. 'You
learn to work, my dear'--and I did...."

She paused.

"Father's inquest?" said Lady Harman.

Susan seemed to brace herself to the occasion. "Father," she said, "was
drowned. I know--I hadn't told you that before. He was drowned in the
Lea. It's always been a distress and humil