“I care about Bert Snow coming here to lodge, and he’s coming, too!  Do you hear?  I told him he could, and I ain’t going to be made to look small—­”

“You won’t look any smaller,” said his wife reassuringly, and he wondered stupidly exactly what she meant, or if she meant anything.  “You must tell your friend he cannot come here, I haven’t got a room for him.  I am not going to have such as he in Charlie’s room.  Jessie is to have it, and it’s about time, I think, that your daughter had a bed and a room fit for her to sleep in,” she added scathingly.

Harry Lang did not care in the least whether Jessie had or had not a bed, or if she slept on the doorstep; but he cared very much about his friend, and he meant to have his own way.  But though he stormed, and bullied, and even struck his wife, he found her, for the first time, as firm as adamant, and quite as indifferent to him.  His orders meant nothing to her, and the change in her impressed him very much.

So Jessie, for the first time since she left Springbrook, had a real bedroom again, and a place she could call her own.  She did not quite like using it, but she felt that her mother wished it.  Mrs. Lang would have liked to keep the little room always sacred to the memory of him who had spent most of his little life in it, but rather Jessie should have it than that it should be desecrated by a betting, drinking, gambling stranger, who would pollute it, she felt, by his presence!

So Jessie and her possessions were installed.  It was not a long business, for her belongings were very few.  She had not had a penny or a gift of any kind since she came to London, except a little book of hymns that Miss Patch had given her, and one of Charlie’s favourite books which he had wished her to have.  Her little stock of clothing had never been added to since she came, until now, when her stepmother seemed to find pleasure in providing her with a very thorough outfit of mourning.

Now that she had lost her boy, the one and only joy that was hers, Mrs. Lang seemed to turn to Jessie with more real affection than she had ever shown before.  Jessie had loved her dead darling, and any one who had loved him or been good to him had all the grateful devotion of the poor mother’s aching heart.

Charlie’s little room was re-papered and painted, his little bed was put away, and another bought for Jessie, and on the floor was spread a new rug.  Jessie soon grew to take quite a pride in her little room.  She scrubbed the floor every week, and polished the window until it put to shame most of the windows in the neighbourhood.  Miss Patch gave her a piece of pretty chintz to hang at the back of her looking-glass, and Tom Salter actually brought her home one day a china vase to stand on her mantelpiece.  Jessie was proud and pleased sure enough then! and, as time went on, and she grew to miss Charlie less, she would have been quite happy if she might but have written to her grandfather and grandmother, or could have had some tidings of them.