on, and so he
walked down with me." Every word she said appeared intolerably foolish
to her as she uttered it.

"And then he brought ye in here!" Batchgrew grimly completed the tale.

"We came in here for ten minutes or so, as I'd finished my shopping
so quickly. Mr. Fores has just run across to the butcher's to get
something that was forgotten."

Mr. Batchgrew coughed loosely and loudly. And beyond the cough, beyond
the confines of the ugly little room which imprisoned her so close to
old Batchgrew and his grotesque whiskers, Rachel could hear the harsh,
quick laughter of the audience, and then faint music--far off.

"If young Fores was here," said Mr. Batchgrew brutally, "I should tell
him straight as he might do better than to go gallivanting about the
town until that there money's found."

He turned towards his boxes.

"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Batchgrew," said Rachel, tapping her
foot and trying to be very dignified.

"And I'll tell ye another thing, young miss," Batchgrew went on.
"Every minute as ye spend with young Fores ye'll regret. He's a bad
lot, and ye may as well know it first as last. Ye ought to thank me
for telling of ye, but ye won't."

"I really don't know what you mean, Mr. Batchgrew!" She could not
invent another phrase.

"Ye know what I mean right enough, young miss!... If ye only came in
for ten minutes yer time's up."

Rachel moved to leave.

"Hold on!" Batchgrew stopped her. There was a change in his voice.

"Look at me!" he commanded, but with the definite order was mingled
some trace of cajolery.

She obeyed, quivering, her cheeks the colour of a tomato. In spite of
all preoccupations, she distinctly noticed--and not without a curious
tremor--that his features had taken on a boyish look. In the almost
senile face she could see ambushed the face of the youth that Thomas
Batchgrew had been perhaps half a century before.

"Ye're a fine wench," said he, with a note of careless but genuine
admiration. "I'll not deny it. Don't ye go and throw yerself away.
Keep out o' mischief."

Forgetting all but the last phrase, Rachel marched out of the room,
unspeakably humiliated, wounded beyond any expression of her own. The
cowardly, odious brute! The horrible ancient! What right had he?...
What had she done that was wrong, that would not bear the fullest
inquiry. The shopping was an absolute necessity. She was obliged to
come out. Mrs. Maldon was better, and quietly sleeping. Mrs.