s my first client of any importance, and I shan't
forget how glad I was to get his cheque."

"I'm very pleased that he was useful to you," Selina answered,
impressively. "Will you tell me something that we want to know very
much?"

"Certainly!"

"Are you really not coming back to Medchester to live?"

Brooks shook his head.

"No. I am settling down in London. I have found some work there I
like."

"Then are you the Mr. Brooks who has started what the Daily Courier
calls a 'Whiteby's Charity Scheme' in the East End?"

"Quite true, Miss Bullsom. And your cousin is helping me."

Selina raised her eyebrows.

"Dear me," she said, "I had no idea that Many had time to spare for that
sort of thing, had you, father?

"Many can look after herself, and uncommonly well too," Mr. Bullsom
answered.

"She comes mostly in the evening," Brooks explained, "but she is one of
my most useful helpers."

"It must be so interesting to do good," Louise said, artlessly. "After
dinner, Mr. Brooks, will you tell us all about it?"

"It seems so odd that you should care so much for that sort of thing,"
Selina remarked. "As a rule it is the frumpy and uninteresting people
who go in for visiting the poor and doing good, isn't it? You seem so
young, and so--oh, I don't think I'd better go on."

"Please do," Brooks begged.

"Well, you won't think I was trying to flatter, will you, but I was
going to say, and too clever for that sort of thing."

Brooks smiled.

"Perhaps," he said, "the reason that social reform is so urgently needed
in so many ways is for that very reason, Miss Bullsom--that the wrong
sort of person has been going in for it. Looking after the poor has
meant for most people handing out bits of charity on the toasting-fork
of religion. And that sort of thing doesn't tend to bridge over the
gulf, does it?"

"Toasting-fork!" Selina giggled. "How funny you are, Mr. Brooks."

"Am I?" he answered, good-humouredly. "Now let me hear what you have
been doing since I saw you in town."

Selina was immediately grave--not to say scornful.

"Doing! What do you suppose there is to do here?" she exclaimed,
reproachfully. "We've been sitting still waiting for something to
happen. But--have you said anything to Mr. Brooks yet, papa?"

Mr. Bullsom shook his head.

"Haven't had time," he answered. "Brooks had so much to say to me. You
knew all about our land company, Brooks, of course? You did a bit of
conveyancing for us.