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‘DEAR CHILD–You need not wait through three months of uncertainty. I enclose for you what will make up the passage-money, and also pay the expenses of your mother and sisters’ coming to London. Accept this quietly and sensibly, and do not make any fuss about it, nor when I see you. I shall be busy this evening, and may not call.

‘Your friend,
‘JOHN DOUGLAS.’

But all the same Mary Ann came round quickly, and with her the tall, gaunt, dark, composed landlady; and there was a great scene, Mary Ann crying and accusing herself of unheard-of stupidity for not having guessed that he all along had been her benefactor; and he, on the other hand, sternly bidding her hold her peace and not talk foolishness.

‘Ye did me a great service, ye foolish lass,’ he said; ‘ye made me take to actual work when I was merely idling and loitering about. Ye gave me an object to work for, and pleasant companionship for a space, and now, if I must find something else, that is as it has been ordered; and I maun bide my time.’

A few days afterwards he saw the mother when she arrived–a poor, limp sort of creature–and the two bewildered little girls. He could not, because of office work, go with them, as he had wished, to Southampton; but he accompanied them to the railway station, early in the morning, and bade them farewell. And as he turned away, he said to himself,

‘These poor creatures I shall doubtless see no more in this world; but they will have a little regard for me, perhaps, while they live, and that is something. And now I will consider myself free to spend a trifle of money on myself, when I get it saved again; and I will use it during the holidays they speak of to take a trip back home again, and see the old place, and that the graves of my people are taken care of. And I may be able to make dispositions, too, so that when I’m taken I may be placed there also; for it is but natural that one should wish to rest among one’s own.’