Pa suddenly understood.

"Oh ah!" he said. "Didn't have to pay...." There was a pause. "That's
like Alf Rylett," presently added Pa. Jenny sat looking at him in
consternation at such an uncharitable remark.

"It's not!" she cried. "I never _knew_ you were such a wicked old man!"

Pa gave an antediluvian chuckle that sounded like a magical and
appalling rattle from the inner recesses of his person. He was getting
brighter and brighter, as the stars appear to do when the darkness
deepens.

"See," he proceeded. "Did Alf say there was any noos?" He admitted an
uncertainty. Furtively he looked at her, suspecting all the time that
memory had betrayed him; but in his ancient way continuing to trust to
Magic.

"Well, you didn't seem to think much of what he _did_ bring. But I'll
tell you a bit of news, Pa. And that is, that you've got a pair of the
rummiest daughters I ever struck!"

Pa looked out from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows, resembling a worn
and dilapidated perversion of Whistler's portrait of Carlyle. His
eyelids seemed to work as he brooded upon her announcement. It was as
though, together, these two explored the Blanchard archives for
confirmation of Jenny's sweeping statement. The Blanchards of several
generations might have been imagined as flitting across a fantastic
horizon, keening for their withered laurels, thrown into the shades by
these more brighter eccentrics. It was, or it might have been, a
fascinating speculation. But Pa did not indulge this antique vein for
very long. The moment and its concrete images beguiled him back to the
daughter before him and the daughter who was engaged in an unexpected
emotional treat. He said:

"I know," and gave a wide grin that showed the gaps in his teeth as
nothing else could have done--not even the profoundest yawn. Jenny was
stunned by this evidence of brightness in her parent.

"Well, you're a caution!" she cried. "And to think of you sitting there
saying it! And I reckon they've got a pretty rummy old Pa--if the truth
was only known."

Pa's grin, if possible, stretched wider. Again that terrible chuckle,
which suggested a derangement of his internal parts, or the running-down
of an overwound clock, wheezed across the startled air.

"Maybe," Pa said, with some unpardonable complacency. "Maybe."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Jenny. She could not be sure, when his manner
returned to one of vacancy, and when the kitchen was silent, whether Pa
and she h