of trouble, poor thing," pursued the landlady. "We
was sorry to lose sight of her, but glad, I'm sure, that she went away
to do better for herself. She hasn't been home since then, and we don't
hear of her coming, and I'm sure nobody can be surprised. But our
Martha heard from her not so long ago--why, it was about
Christmas-time."

"Is she"--he was about to add, "in service?" but could not voice the
words. "She has an engagement in London?"

"Yes; she's a bookkeeper, and earns her pound a week. She was always
clever at figures. She got on so well at the school that they wanted
her to be a teacher, but she didn't like it. Then Mr. Reckitt, the
ironmonger, a friend of her father's, got her to help him with his
books and bills of an evening, and when she was seventeen, because his
business was growing and he hadn't much of a head for figures himself,
he took her regular into the shop. And glad she was to give up the
school-teaching, for she could never abear it."

"You say she had a lot of trouble?"

"Ah, that indeed she had! And all her father's fault. But for him,
foolish man, they might have been a well-to-do family. But he's had to
suffer for it himself, too. He lives up here on the hill, in a poor
cottage, and takes wages as a timekeeper at Robinson's when he ought to
have been paying men of his own. The drink--that's what it was. When
our Martha first knew them they were living at Walsall, and if it
hadn't a' been for Eve they'd have had no home at all. Martha got to
know her at the Sunday-school; Eve used to teach a class. That's seven
or eight years ago; she was only a girl of sixteen, but she had the
ways of a grown-up woman, and very lucky it was for them belonging to
her. Often and often they've gone for days with nothing but a dry loaf,
and the father spending all he got at the public."

"Was it a large family?" Hilliard inquired.

"Well, let me see; at that time there was Eve's two sisters and her
brother. Two other children had died, and the mother was dead, too. I
don't know much about _her_, but they say she was a very good sort of
woman, and it's likely the eldest girl took after her. A quieter and
modester girl than Eve there never was. Our Martha lived with her aunt
at Walsall--that's my only sister, and she was bed-rid, poor thing, and
had Martha to look after her. And when she died, and Martha came back
here to us, the Madeley family came here as well, 'cause the father got
some kind of work. B