The door flew open, and a girl in the long-legged, short-frocked period of existence, flung into the room.

A lot of colourless, rather lanky hair was scattered over her shoulders.  Seeing her mother, she stood still, and directed her pale prying eyes upon the letter.

“From father,” murmured Mrs. MacWhirr.  “What have you done with your ribbon?”

The girl put her hands up to her head and pouted.

“He’s well,” continued Mrs. MacWhirr languidly.  “At least I think so.  He never says.”  She had a little laugh.  The girl’s face expressed a wandering indifference, and Mrs. MacWhirr surveyed her with fond pride.

“Go and get your hat,” she said after a while.  “I am going out to do some shopping.  There is a sale at Linom’s.”

“Oh, how jolly!” uttered the child, impressively, in unexpectedly grave vibrating tones, and bounded out of the room.

It was a fine afternoon, with a gray sky and dry sidewalks.  Outside the draper’s Mrs. MacWhirr smiled upon a woman in a black mantle of generous proportions armoured in jet and crowned with flowers blooming falsely above a bilious matronly countenance.  They broke into a swift little babble of greetings and exclamations both together, very hurried, as if the street were ready to yawn open and swallow all that pleasure before it could be expressed.

Behind them the high glass doors were kept on the swing.  People couldn’t pass, men stood aside waiting patiently, and Lydia was absorbed in poking the end of her parasol between the stone flags.  Mrs. MacWhirr talked rapidly.

“Thank you very much.  He’s not coming home yet.  Of course it’s very sad to have him away, but it’s such a comfort to know he keeps so well.”  Mrs. MacWhirr drew breath.  “The climate there agrees with him,” she added, beamingly, as if poor MacWhirr had been away touring in China for the sake of his health.

Neither was the chief engineer coming home yet.  Mr. Rout knew too well the value of a good billet.

“Solomon says wonders will never cease,” cried Mrs. Rout joyously at the old lady in her armchair by the fire.  Mr. Rout’s mother moved slightly, her withered hands lying in black half-mittens on her lap.

The eyes of the engineer’s wife fairly danced on the paper.  “That captain of the ship he is in—­a rather simple man, you remember, mother?—­has done something rather clever, Solomon says.”

“Yes, my dear,” said the old woman meekly, sitting with bowed silvery head, and that air of inward stillness characteristic of very old people who seem lost in watching the last flickers of life.  “I think I remember.”

Solomon Rout, Old Sol, Father Sol, the Chief, “Rout, good man”—­Mr. Rout, the condescending and paternal friend of youth, had been the baby of her many children—­all dead by this time.  And she remembered him best as a boy of ten—­long before he went away to serve his apprenticeship in some great engineering works in the North.  She had seen so little of him since, she had gone through so many years, that she had now to retrace her steps very far back to recognize him plainly in the mist of time.  Sometimes it seemed that her daughter-in-law was talking of some strange man.