to the elder girl.  The sense of rivalry, however, was acute:  it coloured every moment of their domestic life, unwinking and incessant.  When Emmy came from the scullery into the kitchen bearing her precious dish of stew, and when Jenny, standing up, was measured against her, this rivalry could have been seen by any skilled observer.  It rayed and forked about them as lightning might have done about two adjacent trees.  Emmy put down her dish.

“Fetch Pa, will you!” she said briefly.  One could see who gave orders in the kitchen.

iv

Jenny found her father in his bedroom, sitting before the dressing-table upon which a tall candle stood in an equally tall candlestick.  He was looking intently at his reflection in the looking-glass, as one who encounters and examines a stranger.  In the glass his face looked red and ugly, and the tossed grey hair and heavy beard were made to appear startlingly unkempt.  His mouth was open, and his eyes shaded by lowered lids.  In a rather trembling voice he addressed Jenny upon her entrance.

“Is supper ready?” he asked.  “I heard you come in.”

“Yes, Pa,” said Jenny.  “Aren’t you going to brush your hair?  Got a fancy for it like that, have you?  My!  What a man!  With his shirt unbuttoned and his tie out.  Come here!  Let’s have a look at you!” Although her words were unkind, her tone was not, and as she rectified his omissions and put her arm round him Jenny gave her father a light hug.  “All right, are you?  Been a good boy?”

“Yes ... a good boy....” he feebly and waveringly responded.  “What’s the noos to-night, Jenny?”

Jenny considered.  It made her frown, so concentrated was her effort to remember.

“Well, somebody’s made a speech,” she volunteered.  “They can all do that, can’t they!  And somebody’s paid five hundred pounds transfer for Jack Sutherdon ... is it Barnsley or Burnley?...  And—­oh, a fire at Southwark....  Just the usual sort of news, Pa.  No murders....”

“Ah, they don’t have the murders they used to have,” grumbled the old man.

“That’s the police, Pa.”  Jenny wanted to reassure him.

“I don’t know how it is,” he trembled, stiffening his body and rising from the chair.

“Perhaps they hush ’em up!” That was a shock to him.  He could not move until the notion had sunk into his head.  “Or perhaps people are more careful....  Don’t get leaving themselves about like they used to.”

Pa Blanchard had no suggestion.  Such perilous ideas, so frequently started by Jenny for his mystification, joggled together in his brain and made there the subject of a thousand ruminations.  They tantalised Pa’s slowly revolving thoughts, and kept these moving through long hours of silence.  Such notions preserved his interest in the world, and his senile belief in Magic, as nothing else could have done.

Together, their pace suited to his step, the two moved slowly to the door.  It took a long time to make the short journey, though Jenny supported her father on the one side and he used a stick in his right hand.  In the passage he waited while she blew out his candle; and then they went forward to the meal.  At the approach Pa’s eyes opened wider, and luminously glowed.