e than if they was so many flies. I don't have any unnecessary
words, but I put 'em down quick, I can tell you, when they talk to me.
No; it's quite nice these days. I lock my door, and they can only
call me names through the keyhole, and I sit inside, just like a lady,
mending socks. Mr. Torpenhow wears his socks out both ends at once.'

'Three quid a week from me, and the delights of my society. No socks
mended. Nothing from Torp except a nod on the landing now and again, and
all his socks mended. Bessie is very much a woman,' thought Dick; and he
looked at her between half-shut eyes. Food and rest had transformed the
girl, as Dick knew they would.

'What are you looking at me like that for?' she said quickly. 'Don't.
You look reg'lar bad when you look that way. You don't think much o' me,
do you?'

'That depends on how you behave.'

Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a
sitting to bid her go out into the gray streets. She very much preferred
the studio and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in her lap as
an excuse for delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and Bessie would
be moved to tell strange and wonderful stories of her past, and still
stranger ones of her present improved circumstances. She would make them
tea as though she had a right to make it; and once or twice on these
occasions Dick caught Torpenhow's eyes fixed on the trim little figure,
and because Bessie'' flittings about the room made Dick ardently long
for Maisie, he realised whither Torpenhow's thoughts were tending. And
Bessie was exceedingly careful of the condition of Torpenhow's linen.
She spoke very little to him, but sometimes they talked together on the
landing.

'I was a great fool,' Dick said to himself. 'I know what red firelight
looks like when a man's tramping through a strange town; and ours is a
lonely, selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn't feel
that sometimes. But I can't order Bessie away. That's the worst of
beginning things. One never knows where they stop.'

One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last limit of the light,
Dick was roused from a nap by a broken voice in Torpenhow's room. He
jumped to his feet. 'Now what ought I to do? It looks foolish to go
in.--Oh, bless you, Binkie!' The little terrier thrust Torpenhow's door
open with his nose and came out to take possession of Dick's chair. The
door swung wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessi