"Deleah will be a flirt when she grows up," Bessie said, who knew that her mother was regarding the pretty child with admiration.

"Do you think so, my dear? I hope not, Bessie."

"She will! And she wants looking after. I thought, for a girl not yet 'out,' she was very forward last night. Reggie thought so too."

"I'm afraid you put it into his head, Bessie."

"As if Reggie had not got ideas of his own! Without my even so much as _hinting_ he said he supposed she knew she was pretty."

"Reggie isn't here to-day, Bessie."

"I think he will come. He said he would come, and as I could not skate he promised to push me in a chair on the ice. We need not go home yet, mama. I like watching the skating."

But she only watched the arrivals; and Reggie Forcus was never among them.

"Perhaps he's gone to speak to papa," she said brightly after a silence."

No doubt he thought, after all, it would be better to get things settled. I expect that is what Reggie has done, mama."

"I would not think so much about it, if I were you, my dear. Wait until matters have arranged themselves."

"Yes, but ought not we to do something to arrange them?" Bessie persisted.

"It is not usual, Bessie."

"But, mama, am I to lose Reggie for any nonsense of that sort? Usual or not usual I think you or papa should speak to him."

To pacify her the mother admitted that her father had even thought of doing so.

"Then I hope papa will have the sense to do it; and to get the whole thing settled," Bessie said.

She awaited in feverish expectancy the return of her father from his office, that evening, welcoming him with bright eyes and eager looks, trying to read in his face that which she longed to hear from his lips. But Mr. Day had arrived home in a temper of mind the reverse of encouraging. In gloomy silence he sat through the meal which families of the upper middle cla.s.ses then took instead of dinner at the dinner hour. A comfortable, informal meal at which a big silver tea-tray and great silver tea-urn and heavily embossed tea-services, took a prominent part; where rolls and patties and huge hams and much-decorated tongues were present; and hot toast and m.u.f.fins and many cakes. No servants waited; there was no centre-piece of flowers; but the gas from the many branches of the great chandelier of scintillating cut gla.s.s overhead shone on the silver and china and the appetising viands to which the Days always did such ample justice in a very agreeable way.

But to-night the master of the house, seated opposite his wife at her tea-tray, ate nothing of the generous fare. He had a black look on his heavy face, and short snarling replies for those who ventured to address him. Such a mood was not altogether unusual with him; when it was understood among them that something had gone wrong at the office and that it was safest to leave him alone. But Bessie, whose characteristic it was never, for a moment, under whatever stress of circ.u.mstances, to forget her own individual interests, kept whispering to her mother, by whose side she sat, urging her to ask of her father that which she desired to know.

"Ask him, mama. Do ask him!"

"H'sh, my dear!" a frown and a cautioning glance in the direction of the scowling face.

Bessie's foot upon her mother's beneath the table. "Mama, why are you so silly? Ask him! Ask him!"

The mother was never for long proof against the entreaties or commands of her offspring. "Have you seen anything of Reggie Forcus to-day, William?"

presently she asked.

The man at the other end of the table glared upon her for a moment with angry eyes. "No!" he thundered. "But I have seen Francis Forcus, which was quite enough for me."

A silence fell. Bessie's heart beat loudly, the colour left her face. Her father turned to her as he said the last words. "Yes, papa?" she faltered.

"Your mother sent me to him on a fool's errand," he said. Then, scowling upon daughter and wife, he gulped down a cup of tea, pushed his chair noisily back and went from the room.

As the door closed behind him, Bessie burst into tears.

The boys and Deleah looked at her in consternation. "What's up now?" they asked of each other with lifted eyebrows.

"Bessie, my dear child! You must not give way so. You really must summon up a little pride," the mother chided.

"It's all very well for you!" Bessie retorted chokingly, and sobbed on.

She felt for her handkerchief, and having none of her own grabbed without any thanks that which Deleah threw across the table. Deleah, shocked at the spectacle, watched her sister. "Whatever happened I would not cry before every one like that," she said to herself. Bernard, the elder boy, who lived in a chronic state of quarrelling with Bessie, openly giggled.

Franky, having pulled his mother's face down to his own, was whispering, "What is it, mama? What is the matter with Bessie, now? Does she feel sick?" To feel sick was Franky's idea of the greatest earthly misery.

Having wiped her eyes on Deleah's handkerchief Bessie rolled it into a ball and flung it across the table, with greater force of will than directness of aim, at Bernard's face. "You beast!" she choked. "Mama, Bernard's laughing at me. Oughtn't Bernard to know how to behave better?

Because I'm so unhappy isn't a reason I should be laughed at."

Whereat they all laughed--Bessie was so ridiculous, they thought; and Mrs.

Day, putting out a kind hand to the angrily sobbing girl, led her from the room. "You're all too bad," she said, looking back at the sn.i.g.g.e.ring group.

"Bernard, you should know better."

"Bessie's such an old a.s.s!" the boy excused himself. "I want some more tea, mother. I won't have this her sopping handkerchief fell in. All her beastly tears in my cup!"

"Deleah must pour it out for you," the mother said, and closed the door behind herself and her daughter.

"I won't be called an a.s.s by Bernard! I won't be made fun of by them all!"

Bessie cried. "You should go back, and punish them, mama."

Mrs. Day, murmuring words of soothing, led her to the foot of the stairs, and watched the girl mounting slowly to her room, crying audibly, childish fashion, as she went. "You must try to have more self-control," she said.

"But why did papa look at me in such a horrible manner?"

"You know what your father is, Bessie. So often irritable at home when things have gone wrong at the office. Go to your room till your tears are dry; I will see your father and find out if there is anything to tell you."

Mr. Day was in the room they called the breakfast-room. Looking upon it with the housewife's desire for neatness Mrs. Day often spoke of it as the Pig-sty, but it was the room they all of them loved best in the house. It was here the children learned their lessons for school, the ladies worked, Franky played. It was s.p.a.cious and cheerful, and held nothing that rough usage would spoil. All the most comfortable chairs in the house were pulled up to the hearth, upon which Franky's cats were allowed to lie, and Bernard's dog. A canary, Deleah's especial protegee, hung in the window.

Mr. Day had pulled a chair too small for his huge bulk in front of the fire, and sat, looking huddled and uncomfortable, his feet drawn up beneath his chair, his knees dropped, staring at the bars.

"Is anything the matter, William?" his wife asked. "Aren't you going out again, this evening?"

Every night of his life, except the Sunday night, when on no account would he have missed going to church with his family, he went to a club in the town where whist and three-card loo were played--for higher stakes, it was whispered, than most of its members could spare.

"You have taken off your boots, William: aren't you going to your club?"

"No; I'm not going to my club."

"In heaven's name why?"

"Because my club's seen the last of me."

She looked at him aghast, hearing the news with real dismay. She never would have admitted, even to herself, being a kind woman and a dutiful wife, that she preferred her husband out of her presence rather than in it--her children would not have whispered such a disloyalty; yet if he was going to pa.s.s his evenings in the bosom of his family, for the future, each of them would know in his or her heart that the peacefullest and most enjoyable hours of the day would be spoilt.

"Have you had any unpleasantness over cards, William?"