“I don’t know,” she replied carelessly.

“I shall look for them,” said Philip, and turned to go down-stairs again.

But (though how could a boy imagine it?) Miss Faringfield would not have it that his yielding should be due to her mother, if it could be achieved as a victory for herself.  So she stopped him with a sudden tremulous “Oh, Phil!” and, raising her forearm to the door-post, hid her face against it, and wept as if her heart would break.

Philip had never before known her to shed a tear, and this new spectacle, in a second’s time, took all the firmness out of him.

“Why, Madge, I didn’t know—­don’t cry, Madgie—­”

She turned swiftly, without looking up, and her face, still in a shower of tears, found hiding no longer against the door-post, but against Phil’s breast.

“Don’t cry, Madgie dear,—­I sha’n’t go!”

She raised her wet face, joy sparkling where the lines had not yet lost the shape of grief; and Phil never thought to ask himself how much of her pleasure was for his not going, and how much for the evidence given of her feminine power.  He had presently another thing to consider, a not very palatable dose to swallow—­the returning to the warehouse and telling Mr. Faringfield of his change of mind.  He did this awkwardly enough, no doubt, but manfully enough, I’ll take my oath, though he always said he felt never so tamed and small and ludicrous in his life, before or after.

And that scene upon the landing is the last picture, but one, I have to present of childhood days, ere I hasten, over the period that brought us all into our twenties and to strange, eventful times.  The one remaining sketch is of an unkempt, bedraggled figure that I saw at the back hall door of the Faringfields one snowy night a week later, when, for some reason or other, I was out late in our back garden.  This person, instead of knocking at the door, very cautiously tried it to see if it would open, and, finding it locked, stood timidly back and gazed at it in a quandary.  Suspecting mischief, I went to the paling fence that separated our ground from the Faringfields’, and called out, “Who’s that?”

“Hallo, Bert!” came in a very conciliating tone, low-spoken; and then, as with a sudden thought, “Come over here, will you?”

I crossed the fence, and was in a moment at the side of Master Ned, who looked exceedingly the worse for wear, in face, figure, and clothes.

“Look here,” said he, speaking rapidly, so as to prevent my touching the subject of his return, “I want to sneak in, and up-stairs to bed, without the old man seeing me.  I don’t just like to meet him till to-morrow.  But I can’t sneak in, for the door’s locked, and Noah would be sure to tell dad.  You knock, and when they let you in, pretend you came to play with the kids; and whisper Fanny to slip out and open the door for me.”

I entered readily into the strategy, as a boy will, glad of Ned’s return for the sake of Phil, who I knew was ill at ease for Ned’s absence being in some sense due to himself.