ee her with a besom."

Jane pleaded. "She'd look so pretty with it, George. Just think how
pretty she'd look in a little house, playing with a carpet-sweeper."

"On her knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor----"

"You'd have a woman in to scrub."

"Carrying the coals?"

"_You'd_ carry the coals, George."

"By Jove, I never thought of that. I suppose I could." He pondered.

"You see," he said, "she wants to live at Hampstead."

"You can't cut her off from her own people."

"I'm not cutting her off. She goes to see them."

"She'll go to see them if you live at Hampstead. If you live here
they'll come and see you. For she'll be ill and they'll have to."

Tanqueray looked at her, not without admiration.

"Jinny, you're ten times cleverer than I."

"In some things, Tanks, I am. And so is that wife of yours."

"She's--very sensible. I suppose it's sensible to be in love with a
carpet-sweeper."

She shook her head at him.

"Much more sensible than being in love with _you_."

His eyes evaded her. She rose.

"Oh, Tanks, you goose. Can't you see that it's you she's in love
with--and that's why she _must_ have a carpet-sweeper?"

With that she left him.

He followed her to the doorstep where he turned abruptly from her
departure.

Rose in the sitting-room was kneeling by the hearth where she had just
set a saucer of milk. With one hand she was loosening very gently from
her shoulder the claws of Minny, the cat, who clung to her breast,
scrambling, with the passion and desperation of his kind. Her other
hand restrained with a soft caressing movement Joey's approaches to the
saucer. Joey, though trembling with excitement, sat fascinated, obedient
to her gesture. Joey was puny and hairless as ever, but in Rose's face
as she looked at him there was a flush of maternal tenderness and
gravity. A slightly sallow tinge under its sudden bloom told how Rose
had suffered from the sedentary life.

All this Tanqueray saw as he entered. It held him on the threshold,
unmoved by the rushing assault and lacerating bark of the little dog,
who resented his intrusion.

Rose got up and came to him, lifting a frightened, pleading face.

"Oh, George," she said, "don't make me send them away. Let me keep
them."

"I suppose you must keep them if you want them."

"I never said I wanted them. Aunt _would_ bring them. She thought they'd
be something to occupy my mind, like."

Tanqueray smiled, in spite of his gentleness, at th