old Mr.
Faucitt. She was sorry for his brother, of course, though she had never
had the pleasure of his acquaintance and had only just heard that he had
ever existed; but it was nice to think that her old friend's remaining
years would be years of affluence.

Presently, however, she found her thoughts wandering back into their
melancholy groove. She threw herself wearily on the bed. She was tired
after her bad night.

But she could not sleep. Remorse kept her awake. Besides, she could hear
Mrs. Meecher prowling disturbingly about the house, apparently in search
of someone, her progress indicated by creaking boards and the strenuous
yapping of Toto.

Sally turned restlessly, and, having turned remained for a long instant
transfixed and rigid. She had seen something, and what she had seen
was enough to surprise any girl in the privacy of her bedroom. From
underneath the bed there peeped coyly forth an undeniably masculine shoe
and six inches of a grey trouser-leg.

Sally bounded to the floor. She was a girl of courage, and she meant to
probe this matter thoroughly.

"What are you doing under my bed?"

The question was a reasonable one, and evidently seemed to the intruder
to deserve an answer. There was a muffled sneeze, and he began to crawl
out.

The shoe came first. Then the legs. Then a sturdy body in a dusty coat.
And finally there flashed on Sally's fascinated gaze a head of so nearly
the maximum redness that it could only belong to one person in the
world.

"Ginger!"

Mr. Lancelot Kemp, on all fours, blinked up at her.

"Oh, hullo!" he said.

CHAPTER IX. GINGER BECOMES A RIGHT-HAND MAN

It was not till she saw him actually standing there before her with his
hair rumpled and a large smut on the tip of his nose, that Sally really
understood how profoundly troubled she had been about this young man,
and how vivid had been that vision of him bobbing about on the waters
of the Thames, a cold and unappreciated corpse. She was a girl of keen
imagination, and she had allowed her imagination to riot unchecked.
Astonishment, therefore, at the extraordinary fact of his being there
was for the moment thrust aside by relief. Never before in her life had
she experienced such an overwhelming rush of exhilaration. She flung
herself into a chair and burst into a screech of laughter which even to
her own ears sounded strange. It struck Ginger as hysterical.

"I say, you know!" said Ginger, as the merrimen