’Yes.  I was going to ask you, Mr. Turpin, whether you could do them this evening.  Then I should have them for Monday morning.’

Turpin hesitated, shuffled his feet, and seemed to reflect uneasily; but he said at length that he ‘would see about it,’ and, with a rough bow, got out of the room.  That night no hilarious sounds came from the kitchen.  On Sunday morning, when Miss Rodney went into her sitting-room, she found on the table the wooden geometrical forms, excellently made, just as she wished.  Mabel, who came with breakfast, was bidden to thank her father, and to say that Miss Rodney would like to speak with him again, if his leisure allowed, after tea-time on Monday.  At that hour the carpenter did not fail to present himself, distrustful still, but less embarrassed.  Miss Rodney praised his work, and desired to pay for it.  Oh! that wasn’t worth talking about, said Turpin; but the lady insisted, and money changed hands.  This piece of business transacted, Miss Rodney produced a Euclid, and asked Turpin to show her how far he had gone in it with his boy Harry.  The subject proved fruitful of conversation.  It became evident that the carpenter had a mathematical bias, and could be readily interested in such things as geometrical problems.  Why should he not take up the subject again?

‘Nay, miss,’ replied Turpin, speaking at length quite naturally; ’I shouldn’t have the heart.  If my Harry had lived’

But Miss Rodney stuck to the point, and succeeded in making him promise that he would get out the old Euclid and have a look at it in his leisure time.  As he withdrew, the man had a pleasant smile on his honest face.

On the next Saturday evening the house was again quiet.

Meanwhile, relations between Mrs. Turpin and her lodger were becoming less strained.  For the first time in her life the flabby, foolish woman had to do with a person of firm will and bright intelligence; not being vicious of temper, she necessarily felt herself submitting to domination, and darkly surmised that the rule might in some way be for her good.  All the sluggard and the slattern in her, all the obstinacy of lifelong habits, hung back from the new things which Miss Rodney was forcing upon her acceptance, but she was no longer moved by active resentment.  To be told that she cooked badly had long ceased to be an insult, and was becoming merely a worrying truism.  That she lived in dirt there seemed no way of denying, and though every muscle groaned, she began to look upon the physical exertion of dusting and scrubbing as part of her lot in life.  Why she submitted, Mrs. Turpin could not have told you.  And, as was presently to be seen, there were regions of her mind still unconquered, instincts of resistance which yet had to come into play.