him, tried to take the marks out with some wretched chemist’s stuff, which had not taken them out, but only spread them more.  Now the sofa was completely spoiled, and what to do he did not know, unless he could match the brocade, which was scarcely likely.  And ill could he afford to be buying brocade—­and so on.  Finally he went out to consult with a furniture repairer of his acquaintance, banging doors behind him.  Deb cast a scornful glance upon the smudged brocade.

“What a fuss about nothing!” she brushed the subject by.

“My brother is very particular about this room,” Miss
Goldsworthy apologised for him.

“So I see.”

“And he is very fond of this brocade, which he chose himself.  It certainly is very pretty—­don’t you think so?  But too delicate to wear well.  I am always frightened to see children go near it, or even grown-up people when it has been raining, or if they have been gathering dust—­it does show every spot so!  And it was the mother’s fault.  I signed to Mary to give him a biscuit, but his mother picked out that cake, which had jam in it.  It is very unfortunate.  I don’t wonder at his being vexed.”

“Why don’t you have chintz covers, Moll?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t like it to be covered up,” Miss Goldsworthy struck in, and seemed shocked herself at the suggested waste.  Mary lifted dull eyes to her sister’s face.

“Come and have some tea,” she said.  “Come, auntie; it is no use your worrying yourself.”

And they went into the poky living room, which smelt of meals, and had tea, and the sort of barren talk that the presence of the third person necessitated.  Mary seemed purposely to avoid a tete-A-tete.  When Miss Goldsworthy went to fetch the baby, Ruby was kept at her step-mother’s side.  Only when the black-eyed boy appeared did Mary brighten into a likeness to her old self.  She was a born mother, and her child consoled her.  Then, in the midst of the baby worship, back came the still agitated husband and father, the furniture man with him; and the house was filled anew with the affair of the soiled sofa, so that Deb’s presence, as also her departure, attracted little attention.  As her brother-in-law pushed out a valedictory hand, she noticed a shirt-cuff that had the grime of days upon it.

“He economises in the wash,” she soliloquised, with wrinkling nostril and curling lip.  “And in those filthy cheap coals that choke the grate with dust, and in tea that is undrinkable.  Oh, what a house!”

And she had not been there since.  But now—­

Her benevolence embraced the world, and the world included Bennet Goldsworthy.  It was no longer in his power to make her feel ill.  The sun of her prosperity, shining on him at her sister’s side—­poor, struggling, well-meaning little man!—­gave him a pathetic and appealing interest.  In fact, it was to him that her maternal dispositions towards her family drew her first.