“Want him?” repeated the incensed Miss Evans.  “Want him?  I tell you it’s not Bert.  How dare he come here and call me Nan?”

“You used not to mind it,” said Mr. Carter, plaintively.

“I tell you,” said Miss Evans, turning to her father and brother, “it’s not Bert.  Do you think I don’t know?”

“Well, he ought to know who he is,” said her father, reasonably.

“Of course I ought,” said Mr. Carter, smiling at her.  “Besides, what reason should I have for saying I am Bert if I am not?”

“That’s a fair question,” said Jim, as the girl bit her lip.  “Why should he?”

“Ask him,” said the girl, tartly.

“Look here, my girl,” said Mr. Evans, in ominous accents.  “For four years you’ve been grieving over Bert, and me and Jim have been hunting high and low for him.  We’ve got him at last, and now you’ve got to have him.”

“If he don’t run away again,” said Jim.  “I wouldn’t trust him farther than I could see him.”

Mr. Evans sat and glowered at his prospective son-in-law as the difficulties of the situation developed themselves.  Even Mr. Carter’s reminders that he had come back and surrendered of his own free will failed to move him, and he was hesitating between tying him up and locking him in the attic and hiring a man to watch him, when Mr. Carter himself suggested a way out of the difficulty.

“I’ll lodge with you,” he said, “and I’ll give you all my money and things to take care of.  I can’t run away without money.”

He turned out his pockets on the table.  Seven pounds eighteen shillings and fourpence with his re-turn ticket made one heap; his watch and chain, penknife, and a few other accessories another.  A suggestion of Jim’s that he should add his boots was vetoed by the elder man as unnecessary.

“There you are,” said Mr. Evans, sweeping the things into his own pockets; “and the day you are married I hand them back to you.”

His temper improved as the evening wore on.  By the time supper was finished and his pipe alight he became almost jocular, and the coldness of Miss Evans was the only drawback to an otherwise enjoyable evening.

“Just showing off a little temper,” said her father, after she had withdrawn; “and wants to show she ain’t going to forgive you too easy.  Not but what you behaved badly; however, let bygones be bygones, that’s my idea.”

The behavior of Miss Evans was so much better next day that it really seemed as though her father’s diagnosis was correct.  At dinner, when the men came home from work, she piled Mr. Carter’s plate up so generously that her father and brother had ample time at their disposal to watch him eat.  And when he put his hand over his glass she poured half a pint of good beer, that other men would have been thankful for, up his sleeve.

[Illustration:  “She piled Mr. Carter’s plate up so generously that her father and brother had ample time at their disposal to watch him eat.”]