lifted a
finger to help her until now. One of them's a Mrs. Keeting, the widow of
some City porpoise, I'm told. Well, this woman has a home down in Norfolk.
She never lives there, but a son of hers goes there to fish and shoot now
and then. Well, this is what Mrs. Christopherson tells my aunt, Mrs.
Keeting has offered to let her and her husband live down yonder, rent free,
and their food provided. She's to be housekeeper, in fact, and keep the
place ready for any one who goes down.'

'Christopherson, _I_ can see, would rather stay where he is.'

'Why, of course, he doesn't know how he'll live without the bookshops. But
he's glad for all that, on his wife's account. And it's none too soon, I
can tell you. The poor woman couldn't go on much longer; my aunt says she's
just about ready to drop, and sometimes, I know, she looks terribly bad. Of
course, she won't own it, not she; she isn't one of the complaining sort.
But she talks now and then about the country--the places where she used to
live. I've heard her, and it gives me a notion of what she's gone through
all these years. I saw her a week ago, just when she had Mrs. Keeting's
offer, and I tell you I scarcely knew who it was! You never saw such a
change in any one in your life! Her face was like that of a girl of
seventeen. And her laugh--you should have heard her laugh!'

'Is she much younger than her husband?' I asked.

'Twenty years at least. She's about forty, I think.' I mused for a few
moments.

'After all, it isn't an unhappy marriage?'

'Unhappy?' cried Pomfret. 'Why, there's never been a disagreeable word
between them, that I'll warrant. Once Christopherson gets over the change,
they'll have nothing more in the world to ask for. He'll potter over his
books--'

'You mean to tell me,' I interrupted, 'that those books have all been
bought out of his wife's thirty shillings a week?'

'No, no. To begin with, he kept a few out of his old library. Then, when he
was earning his own living, he bought a great many. He told me once that
he's often lived on sixpence a day to have money for books. A rum old owl;
but for all that he's a gentleman, and you can't help liking him. I shall
be sorry when he's out of reach.'

For my own part, I wished nothing better than to hear of Christopherson's
departure. The story I had heard made me uncomfortable. It was good to
think of that poor woman rescued at last from her life of toil, and in
these days of midsummer free to