Mr. Barrett walked on in silent misery.

“Poor little motherless things!” said Miss Lindsay, softly.  “Motherless and—­fatherless.”

“Better for them,” said Mr. Barrett, finding his voice at last.

“It almost looks like it,” said Miss Lindsay, with a sigh.

Mr. Barrett tried to think clearly, but the circumstances were hardly favourable.  “Suppose,” he said, speaking very slowly, “suppose I wanted to get married?”

Miss Lindsay started.  “What, again?” she said, with an air of surprise.

“How could I ask a girl to come and take over five children?”

“No woman that was worth having would let little children be sacrificed for her sake,” said Miss Lindsay, decidedly.

“Do you think anybody would marry me with five children?” demanded Mr. Barrett.

“She might,” said the girl, edging away from him a little.  “It depends on the woman.”

“Would—­you, for instance?” said Mr. Barrett, desperately.

Miss Lindsay shrank still farther away.  “I don’t know; it would depend upon circumstances,” she murmured.

“I will write and send for them,” said Mr. Barrett, significantly.

Miss Lindsay made no reply.  They had arrived at her gate by this time, and, with a hurried handshake, she disappeared indoors.

Mr. Barrett, somewhat troubled in mind, went home to tea.

He resolved, after a little natural hesitation, to drown the children, and reproached himself bitterly for not having disposed of them at the same time as their mother.  Now he would have to go through another period of mourning and the consequent delay in pressing his suit.  Moreover, he would have to allow a decent interval between his conversation with Miss Lindsay and their untimely end.

The news of the catastrophe arrived two or three days before the return of the girl from her summer holidays.  She learnt it in the first half-hour from her landlady, and sat in a dazed condition listening to a description of the grief-stricken father and the sympathy extended to him by his fellow-citizens.  It appeared that nothing had passed his lips for two days.

[Illustration:  She learnt the news in the first half-hoer from her landlady.]

“Shocking!” said Miss Lindsay, briefly.  “Shocking !”

An instinctive feeling that the right and proper thing to do was to nurse his grief in solitude kept Mr. Barrett out of her way for nearly a week.  When she did meet him she received a limp handshake and a greeting in a voice from which all hope seemed to have departed.

“I am very sorry,” she said, with a sort of measured gentleness.

Mr. Barrett, in his hushed voice, thanked her.

“I am all alone now,” he said, pathetically.  “There is nobody now to care whether I live or die.”