Where is she?” cried David, getting louder and louder.  “Why, she is cooling her heels in the hall this half hour and more.  They hadn’t the manners to show her into a room.”

“I will go to her, Mr. Dodd,” said Lucy, turning a little pale.  “Don’t be angry; I will go directly”; and, having said this with an abject slavishness that formed a miraculous contrast with her late crossness and imperious chilliness, she put down her work hastily and went out; only at the door she curved her throat, and cast back, Parthian-like, a glance of timid reproach, as much as to say, “Need you have been so very harsh with a creature so obedient as this is?”

That deprecating glance did Mr. Dodd’s business.  It shot him with remorse, and made him feel a brute.

“Ha! ha!  That is the way to speak to her, Mr. Dodd; the other gentlemen spoil her.”

“It was very unbecoming of me to speak to her harshly like that.”

“Pooh! nonsense; these girls like to be ordered about; it saves them the trouble of thinking for themselves; but what is to become of me?  You have sent off my workwoman.”

“I will do her work for her.”

“What! can you sew?”

“Where is the sailor that can’t sew?”

“Delightful!  Then please to sew these two thick ends together.  Here is a large needle.”

David whipped out of his pocket a round piece of leather with strings attached, and fastened it to the hollow of his hand.

“What is that?”

“It is a sailor’s thimble.”  He took the work, held it neatly, and shoved the needle from behind through the thick material.  He worked slowly and uncouthly, but with the precision that was a part of his character, and made exact and strong stitches.  His task-mistress looked on, and, under the pretense of minute inspection, brought a face that was still arch and pretty unnecessarily close to the marine milliner, in which attitude they were surprised by Mr. Bazalgette, who, having come in through the open folding-doors, stood looking mighty sardonic at them both before they were even aware he was in the room.

Omphale colored faintly, but Hercules gave a cool nod to the newcomer, and stitched on with characteristic zeal and strict attention to the matter in hand.

At this Bazalgette uttered a sort of chuckle, at which Mrs. Bazalgette turned red.  David stitched on for the bare life.

“I came to offer to invite you to my study, but—­”

“I can’t come just now,” said David, bluntly; “I am doing a lady’s work for her.”

“So I see,” retorted Bazalgette, dryly.

“We all dine with the Hunts but you and Mr. Dodd,” said Mrs. Bazalgette, “so you will be en tete-a-tete all the evening.”

“All the better for us both.”  And with this ingratiating remark Mr. Bazalgette retired whistling.

Mrs. Bazalgette heaved a gentle sigh:  “Pity me, my friend,” said she, softly.