f Lalage, with the mud and
rain squelching through her shoes, looking for someone to give her
shelter.

CHAPTER XIII

If Ida felt any relief when, at the end of four miserably long days,
Jimmy returned to town, she did not say so, even to her husband. It had
been a trial in many ways, but, at the same time, she was conscious of
having done her duty. She had impressed her brother with a sense of what
he owed to the family in the matter of conduct, and his very depression
seemed to show that he had taken the matter to heart.

"Jimmy's nerves are all wrong. He's like a man on wires. He wants a
comfortable home and a wife to look after him," Fenton ventured to
remark whilst his brother-in-law was upstairs, packing; but Ida brushed
the theory aside scornfully.

"I am surprised at you, Joseph. It is not at all the way to speak of
marriage. The Griersons have always waited until they were in a position
to marry, and have never held those disgusting ideas of nerves and so
on. Jimmy most emphatically cannot think of marrying for many years to
come. He is perfectly well, or he would be if he did not smoke and drink
so much. He has the remedy in his own hands."

Fenton shrugged his shoulders and turned away, wondering inwardly
whether the Grierson strain would predominate in his own children. He
almost wished Jimmy had not come down. It was annoying to be disturbed
and made to think after having got out of the habit of so doing.

The men and women of the type Ida usually invited to the house never
worried him in that way, belonging as they did to the class which can
afford to take its theories as facts.

Jimmy had heard once from Lalage, a brief little note, just
acknowledging his letters, and telling him nothing. Mrs. Fenton had
watched carefully whilst he was reading it--she had detected a woman's
handwriting--but he had managed to keep his composure, and then, the
better to deceive her, he had rolled the paper into a ball and tossed it
on to the fire, though it cut him to the heart to part with anything
which had once been Lalage's.

He had hoped the girl would have been waiting for him at the station;
but he failed to see her tall figure on the platform, so, jumping into a
cab, he told the driver to take him to the mansions. However, as they
went up the last street, he caught sight of Lalage coming out of a
hairdresser's shop. A moment later he was beside her.

Jimmy's first impression was one of delight at