The listener, listening intently, here put a quiet question—­“Did you pay her?”—­which caused the narrator to wince like a galled horse.

“Ah, there you hit the weak spot, Miss Urquhart, right in the bull’s-eye,” he declared, sighing furiously.  “If I could have paid her, of course there’d have been no difficulty at all.  But she wouldn’t be paid.”

“You ought to have insisted on it,” said Alice severely.

“I did insist.  I insisted all I knew.  But she said it was a labour of love for her friend, and seemed so hurt at the idea of money being brought into the question, that I was ashamed to press her beyond a certain point.  She let me pay for the nurse’s board, and that was all.  The baby didn’t eat anything, you see, and they were comfortably off, with lots of spare room in their house, and I just looked on it as a sort of temporary visit—­until I came back—­until I should be able to turn round a bit.  But”—­with another sigh—­“he’s there yet.”

Miss Urquhart nodded, with an air of utter wisdom.

“Of course you went to see the child?”

“Three times—­whenever I was in port.  And found him always the same—­ so beautifully cared for that, upon my soul, I never saw a baby in my life so sweet and clean and wholesome-looking; jolly as a little sandboy all the time, too.”

“That means that he had a perfect constitution—­inherited from you evidently—­and that you were fortunate in the nurse.”

“Very fortunate.  But it appeared that beyond—­beyond running the commissariat department, so to speak, she did next to nothing for him.  Miss—­the lady I spoke of—­did everything.  Made herself a perfect slave to him.”

“Bought his clothes?”

“Oh,” groaned the wretched man, “I suppose so.  What did I know about a baby’s clothes?  And she wouldn’t answer my questions—­said he was all right, and didn’t want for anything, as I could see with my own eyes.  I tried making presents—­used to bring her curios and things—­found out her birthday, and sent her a jewel—­took every chance I could see to work off the obligation.  But it was no use.  She gave me a birthday present after I’d given her one.”

“Well, if moths will go into spiders’ webs,” laughed his companion, “they must take the consequences.”

“Sometimes they get helped out,” he replied.  “Some beneficent, godlike being puts out an omnipotent finger—­”

He looked at her, and she looked at him.  At this moment they seemed to have known one another intimately for years.  The moon again.

“Tell me everything,” she said, “and I’ll help you out.”

So then he told her that he had not “this time” visited his son.  He might have added that he had come to Five Creeks partly to avoid being visited by him.  Cowardly and weak he frankly confessed himself.  “But the thing was too confoundedly awkward—­too embarrassing altogether.”