out of hearing.  That sort o’ chaff’s cowardly.  Boys are stiff young parties—­circulation—­and I don’t tackle them pretty often, ’xcept when I’m going like a ball among nine-pins.  It’s all a matter o’ circulation.  I say, my dear,” Anthony addressed her seriously, “you should never lay hold o’ my arm when you see me going my pace of an afternoon.  I took you for a thief, and worse—­I did.  That I did.  Had you been waiting to see me?”

“A little,” Dahlia replied, breathless.

“You have been ill?”

“A little,” she said.

“You’ve written to the farm?  O’ course you have!”

“Oh! uncle, wait,” moaned Dahlia.

“But, ha’ you been sick, and not written home?”

“Wait; please, wait,” she entreated him.

“I’ll wait,” said Anthony; “but that’s no improvement to queerness; and ’queer’’s your motto.  Now we cross London Bridge.  There’s the Tower that lived in times when no man was safe of keeping his own money, ’cause of grasping kings—­all claws and crown.  I’m Republican as far as ‘none o’ them’—­goes.  There’s the ships.  The sun rises behind ’em, and sets afore ’em, and you may fancy, if you like, there’s always gold in their rigging.  Gals o’ your sort think I say, come! tell me, if you are a lady?”

“No, uncle, no!” Dahlia cried, and then drawing in her breath, added:  “not to you.”

“Last time I crossed this bridge with a young woman hanging on my arm, it was your sister; they say she called on you, and you wouldn’t see her; and a gal so good and a gal so true ain’t to be got for a sister every day in the year!  What are you pulling me for?”

Dahlia said nothing, but clung to him with a drooping head, and so they hurried along, until Anthony stopped in front of a shop displaying cups and muffins at the window, and leprous-looking strips of bacon, and sausages that had angled for appetites till they had become pallid sodden things, like washed-out bait.

Into this shop he led her, and they took possession of a compartment, and ordered tea and muffins.

The shop was empty.

“It’s one of the expenses of relationship,” Anthony sighed, after probing Dahlia unsatisfactorily to see whether she intended to pay for both, or at least for herself; and finding that she had no pride at all.  “My sister marries your father, and, in consequence—­well! a muffin now and then ain’t so very much.  We’ll forget it, though it is a breach, mind, in counting up afterwards, and two-pences every day’s equal to a good big cannonball in the castle-wall at the end of the year.  Have you written home?”

Dahlia’s face showed the bright anguish of unshed tears.

“Uncle-oh! speak low.  I have been near death.  I have been ill for so long a time.  I have come to you to hear about them—­my father and Rhoda.  Tell me what they are doing, and do they sleep and eat well, and are not in trouble?  I could not write.  I was helpless.  I could not hold a pen.  Be kind, dear uncle, and do not reproach me.  Please, tell me that they have not been sorrowful.”