“I sleep in the north attic.  It doesn’t look out on to the street; and I can’t—­I can’t possibly do it.”

“You can come down and wait for me in the hall.”

“How can I?”

“When the tired one goes to bed, you can come down.  She goes to bed at ten, I know, and I shall not be in until about half-past ten.  I don’t want Dave to know—­well, because I don’t.  I don’t want Alice to know, because I dislike Alice very much.”

“Really, Kathleen, you ought not to speak like that.”

“Well, I do, and I can’t help myself.  Will you do what I want?  Here, do you think you’d like this in your possession?”

As Kathleen spoke she held out a golden sovereign in the palm of her little hand.

“I don’t want to be bribed.”

“It isn’t bribery really; it is paying you for giving me a great convenience.  I must go out on important business.  I want to help those who are down-trodden and distressed.  Will you do what I want, Ben—­will you, dear Ben?  You know I like you so much.  Will you—­will you?”

Of course, Ben fought against Kathleen’s rather wicked suggestion; of course in the end he yielded.  When he finally got up to his attic to thumb over his well-worn lesson-books he had Kathleen’s golden sovereign in his pocket.  He took it out and looked at it; he turned it round and round and examined it all over.  He rubbed it lovingly against his freckled cheek, held it until it got warm in the palm of his hand, and then put it back in his pocket and jingled it against a couple of pennies which were its only companions.

“A whole sovereign,” he said to himself—­“a whole sovereign, and I never had so much as five shillings of my own in the whole course of my life.  Well, she is a little witch.  I suppose Dave would beat me black and blue for doing a thing of this sort.  But how could I—­how could I withstand her?”

Supper at the Tennants’ generally consisted of cold pudding, cold meat, bread-and-butter, and a little jam when there happened to be any in the house.  It was not a particularly tempting meal, and those who ate it required to have good, vigorous appetites.  Kathleen, although she had been brought up in a considerable amount of wasteful splendor, was indifferent to what she ate.  She soon jumped up and walked across the little passage into the drawing-room.  Ben, looking very red and shamefaced, would not meet her eyes.  Ben’s face annoyed Kathleen.  It did not occur to her for a minute that he would not be faithful to her, but she was afraid that others might notice his extraordinary and perturbed expression.  Once, too, he jingled the sovereign in his pocket; she heard him, and wondered why David did not ask him where he had got the money.  But no remark was made, and the meal came safely to an end.  Kathleen took up the first book she could find and pretended to read.

“I shall feign sleepiness at a quarter to nine,” she said to herself, “and go upstairs.  I shall be awfully polite and sweet to dear Alice.  She never comes to bed before ten, so I shall be quite safe getting out of the house.  I can drop from the window, but I should prefer going by the back door; and I don’t think Maria will betray me.”