eling, despised himself for it, struggled with it nay,
internally yielded to it and cherished it, long before he suffered the
slightest expression of it, by word, action, or look, to escape him. He
watched Alice's docile obedient ways to her stepmother; the love which
she had inspired in the rough Norah (roughened by the wear and tear of
sorrow and years); but above all, he saw the wild, deep, passionate
affection existing between her and her child. They spoke little to any
one else, or when any one else was by; but, when alone together, they
talked, and murmured, and cooed, and chattered so continually, that Mr.
Openshaw first wondered what they could find to say to each other, and
next became irritated because they were always so grave and silent with
him. All this time, he was perpetually devising small new pleasures for
the child. His thoughts ran, in a pertinacious way, upon the desolate
life before her; and often he came back from his day's work loaded with
the very thing Alice had been longing for, but had not been able to
procure. One time it was a little chair for drawing the little sufferer
along the streets, and many an evening that ensuing summer Mr. Openshaw
drew her along himself, regardless of the remarks of his acquaintances.
One day in autumn he put down his newspaper, as Alice came in with the
breakfast, and said, in as indifferent a voice as he could assume:

"Mrs. Frank, is there any reason why we two should not put up our horses
together?"

Alice stood still in perplexed wonder. What did he mean? He had resumed
the reading of his newspaper, as if he did not expect any answer; so she
found silence her safest course, and went on quietly arranging his
breakfast without another word passing between them. Just as he was
leaving the house, to go to the warehouse as usual, he turned back and
put his head into the bright, neat, tidy kitchen, where all the women
breakfasted in the morning:

"You'll think of what I said, Mrs. Frank" (this was her name with the
lodgers), "and let me have your opinion upon it to-night."

Alice was thankful that her mother and Norah were too busy talking
together to attend much to this speech. She determined not to think
about it at all through the day; and, of course, the effort not to think
made her think all the more. At night she sent up Norah with his tea.
But Mr. Openshaw almost knocked Norah down as she was going out at the
door, by pushing past her and calli