ry pleased to give you a cup of tea at Dora's lodging--at least we can
do that for you, and it may be acceptable on such an oppressive
afternoon."

He, a guest at a lodging of Dora Millar's: it sounded odd enough!

"Do come, Mr. Robinson," his friend May was imploring, while Dora,
sensible that something was due from her as the ostensible mistress of
the lodging, echoed shyly, without raising her eyes to his face, "Yes,
come, please."

Did she remember the last time she gave him tea in the drawing-room of
the Old Doctor's House, where they were not likely to meet again? How
awkward they found the _tete-a-tete_. How they shrank from their hands
touching, while he reproached her for aiding and abetting May in trying
to shirk going to St. Ambrose's; and she had borne his reproaches and
admitted the reasonableness of his arguments, with all the meek candour
of Dora, while still making a last stand for May.

He went with the girls as if he were in a dream; but he was not left to
dream in Dora's very plain lodging, where Annie and not the mistress of
the lodging poured out tea, and May insisted on helping him to bread
and butter. He saw Rose, too, who had been awaiting the return of her
sisters. It sent another pang to his brotherly heart to discover that
Rose also was subdued and well-nigh careworn. She still wrinkled her
forehead and crumpled up her nose, but it was no longer in the old saucy
way; it was under her share of the heavy burden of trouble which had
fallen on these dauntless girls and might end by crushing them.

May was not to be kept from the immense solace of making a clean breast
to her former ally of her stupid dawdling and trifling, and the
retribution which had at once befallen her. "Did father tell you, Mr.
Robinson, that I have failed in my examination?" she began plaintively.
"Yes, I have, and it was all my own fault. I was too silly; I would not
pull myself together and work hard from the first. Now it will never be
in my power to go back to St. Ambrose's. I'll not be able to atone for
my folly by showing that everybody was not wrong when it was believed
that I might be a fair scholar, win a scholarship, and rise to be
classical mistress in a girls' school." At the announcement of the
disastrous failure, by her own deed, of all the ambitious plans for her,
May threatened to break down, springing up and turning away, her
shoulders heaving in a paroxysm of mortification and grief.

Tom Robinson use