But Daisy seemed quite willing to walk; she hadn’t had a walk, she declared, for a long, long time—­and then she blushed rosy red, and even her stepmother had to admit to herself that Daisy was very nice looking, not at all the sort of girl who ought to be allowed to go about the London streets by herself.

CHAPTER XIII

Daisy’s father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door, watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness.

A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had come a full half-hour before they expected him, explaining, rather lamely, that it was the fog which had brought him so soon.

“If we was to have waited much longer, perhaps, ’twouldn’t have been possible to walk a yard,” he explained, and they had accepted, silently, his explanation.

“I hope it’s quite safe sending her off like that?” Bunting looked deprecatingly at his wife.  She had already told him more than once that he was too fussy about Daisy, that about his daughter he was like an old hen with her last chicken.

“She’s safer than she would be, with you or me.  She couldn’t have a smarter young fellow to look after her.”

“It’ll be awful thick at Hyde Park Corner,” said Bunting.  “It’s always worse there than anywhere else.  If I was Joe I’d ’a taken her by the Underground Railway to Victoria—­that ’ud been the best way, considering the weather ’tis.”

“They don’t think anything of the weather, bless you!” said his wife.  “They’ll walk and walk as long as there’s a glimmer left for ’em to steer by.  Daisy’s just been pining to have a walk with that young chap.  I wonder you didn’t notice how disappointed they both were when you was so set on going along with them to that horrid place.”

“D’you really mean that, Ellen?” Bunting looked upset.  “I understood Joe to say he liked my company.”

“Oh, did you?” said Mrs. Bunting dryly.  “I expect he liked it just about as much as we liked the company of that old cook who would go out with us when we was courting.  It always was a wonder to me how the woman could force herself upon two people who didn’t want her.”

“But I’m Daisy’s father; and an old friend of Chandler,” said Bunting remonstratingly.  “I’m quite different from that cook.  She was nothing to us, and we was nothing to her.”

“She’d have liked to be something to you, I make no doubt,” observed his Ellen, shaking her head, and her husband smiled, a little foolishly.

By this time they were back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs. Bunting.  It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit.  The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger.  “You might just let me have one peep at him, Ellen?” she had pleaded, only that morning.  But Ellen had shaken her head.  “No, that I won’t!  He’s a very quiet gentleman; but he knows exactly what he likes, and he don’t like anyone but me waiting on him.  Why, even your father’s hardly seen him.”