“Is her child at home?”

“She is, sir.”

“Let me see her, will you?  In some room, if you please.”

Mrs. Ledward’s squinting eyes took shrewd stock of this gentleman, and, with much politeness, she showed him into her own parlour.  Then she summoned Ida from upstairs, and, the door being closed upon the two, she held her ear as closely as possible to the keyhole.

Ida recognised her visitor with a start, and drew back a little.  There were both fear and dislike in her face, fear perhaps predominating.

“You remember coming to see me,” said Mr. Woodstock, looking down upon the child, and a trifle askance.

“Yes, sir,” was Ida’s reply.

“I have just been at the hospital.  Your mother is dead.”

His voice gave way a little between the first and the last letter of the last word.  Perhaps the sound was more to his ear than the thought had been to his mind.  Perhaps, also, he felt when it was too late that he ought to have made this announcement with something more of preparation.  Ida’s eyes were fixed upon his face, and seemed expanding as they gazed; her lips had parted; she was the image of sudden dread.  He tried to look away from her, but somehow could not.  Then two great tears dropped upon her cheeks, and her mouth began to quiver.  She put her hands up to her face, and sobbed as a grown woman might have done.

Mr. Woodstock turned away for a minute, and fingered a china ornament on the mantelpiece.  He heard the sobs forcibly checked, and, when there was silence, again faced his grandchild.

“You’ll be left all alone now, you see,” he said, his voice less hard.  “I was a friend of your mother’s, and I’ll do what I can for you.  You’d better come with me to my house.”

Ida looked at him in surprise, tempered with indignation.

“If you were a friend of mother’s,” she said, “why did you want to take me away from her and never let her see me again?”

“Well, you’ve nothing to do with that,” said Abraham roughly.  “Go and put your things on, and come with me.”

“No,” replied Ida firmly.  “I don’t want to go with you.”

“What you want has nothing to do with it.  You will do as I tell you.”

Abraham felt strangely in this interview.  It was as though time were repeating itself, and he was once more at issue with his daughter’s childish wilfulness.

Ida did not move.

“Why won’t you come?” asked Mr. Woodstock sharply.

“I don’t want to,” was Ida’s answer.

“Look here, then,” said the other, after a brief consideration.  “You have the choice, and you’re old enough to see what it means.  You can either come with me and be well cared for, or stay here and shift as best you can; now, be sharp and make up your mind.”

“I don’t wish to go with you, I’ll stay here and do my best.”

“Very well.”

Mr. Woodstock whistled a bar of an air, stepped from the room, and thence out into the streets.