He looked straight into her eyes. “You are,” he said. “I have been reading your articles. They are splendid. I’m going to help.” Joan and the Singletons were the last to go. They promised to show Mr. Halliday a short cut to his hotel in Holborn.!

“Not many,” admitted Mr. Simson. “A Christmassy lot. You know. Sort of crowd that interrupts you and tries to be funny. Dead to their own interests. It’s slow work.” “Well, you see, dear,” explained the little old lady, “he gave up things. He could have ridden in his carriage”—she was quoting, it seemed, the words of the Carlyles’ old servant—“if he’d written the sort of lies that people pay for being told, instead of throwing the truth at their head.”

“She only came back yesterday for the half-term,” explained Mrs. Phillips. “There’s no keeping her away from her books. ’Twas her own wish to be sent to boarding-school. How would you like to go to Girton and be a B.A. like Miss Allway?” she asked, turning to the child. They were passing a lamp. Joan had never seen a face look quite so happy as Mary’s looked, just then. “You looked so young,” he answered. “I had always had the idea that it was up to the old people to put the world to rights—that all I had to do was to look after myself. It came to me suddenly while you were talking to me—I mean while I was reading you: that if you were worrying yourself about it, I’d got to come in, too—that it would be mean of me not to. It wasn’t like being preached to. It was somebody calling for help.”