strong arm across the little forecourt into his vehicle.  Not a soul was visible or audible in the infinite length of the straight, flat highway, with its ever-waiting lamps converging to points in each direction.  The air was fresh as country air at this hour, and the stars shone, except to the north-eastward, where there was a whitish light—the dawn.  Sam carefully placed her in the seat, and drove on.

They talked as they had talked in old days, Sam pulling himself up now and then, when he thought himself too familiar.  More than once she said with misgiving that she wondered if she ought to have indulged in the freak.  ‘But I am so lonely in my house,’ she added, ‘and this makes me so happy!’

‘You must come again, dear Mrs. Twycott.  There is no time o’ day for taking the air like this.’

It grew lighter and lighter.  The sparrows became busy in the streets, and the city waxed denser around them.  When they approached the river it was day, and on the bridge they beheld the full blaze of morning sunlight in the direction of St. Paul’s, the river glistening towards it, and not a craft stirring.

Near Covent Garden he put her into a cab, and they parted, looking into each other’s faces like the very old friends they were.  She reached home without adventure, limped to the door, and let herself in with her latch-key unseen.

The air and Sam’s presence had revived her: her cheeks were quite pink—almost beautiful.  She had something to live for in addition to her son.  A woman of pure instincts, she knew there had been nothing really wrong in the journey, but supposed it conventionally to be very wrong indeed.

Soon, however, she gave way to the temptation of going with him again, and on this occasion their conversation was distinctly tender, and Sam said he never should forget her, notwithstanding that she had served him rather badly at one time.  After much hesitation he told her of a plan it was in his power to carry out, and one he should like to take in hand, since he did not care for London work: it was to set up as a master greengrocer down at Aldbrickham, the county-town of their native place.  He knew of an opening—a shop kept by aged people who wished to retire.

‘And why don’t you do it, then, Sam?’ she asked with a slight heartsinking.

‘Because I’m not sure if—you’d join me.  I know you wouldn’t—couldn’t!  Such a lady as ye’ve been so long, you couldn’t be a wife to a man like me.’

‘I hardly suppose I could!’ she assented, also frightened at the idea.

‘If you could,’ he said eagerly, ‘you’d on’y have to sit in the back parlour and look through the glass partition when I was away sometimes—just to keep an eye on things.  The lameness wouldn’t hinder that . . . I’d keep you as genteel as ever I could, dear Sophy—if I might think of it!’ he pleaded.

‘Sam, I’ll be frank,’ she said, putting her hand on his.  ‘If it were only myself I would do it, and gladly, though everything I possess would be lost to me by marrying again.’

‘I don’t mind that!  It’s more independent.’

‘That’s good of you, dear, dear Sam.  But there’s something else.  I have a son . . . I almost fancy when I am miserable sometimes that he is not really mine, but one I hold in trust for my late husband.  He seems to belong so little to me personally, so entirely to his dead father.  He is so much educated and I so little that I do not feel dignified enough to be his mother . . . Well, he would have to be told.’

‘Yes.  Unquestionably.’  Sam saw her thought and her fear.  ‘Still, you can do as you like, Sophy—Mrs. Twycott,’ he added.  ‘It is not you who are the child, but he.’

‘Ah, you don’t know!  Sam, if I could, I would marry you, some day.  But you must wait a while, and let me think.’

It was enough for him, and he was blithe at their parting.  Not so she.  To tell Randolph seemed impossible.  She could wait till he had gone up to Oxford, when what she did would affect his life but little.  But would he ever tolerate the idea?  And if not, could she defy him?

She had not told him a word when the yearly cricket-match came on at Lord’s between the public schools, though Sam had already gone back to Aldbrickham.  Mrs. Twycott felt stronger than usual: she went to the match with Randolph, and was able to leave her chair and walk about occasionally.  The bright idea occurred to her that she could casually broach the subject while moving round among the spectators, when the boy’s spirits were high with interest in the game, and he would weigh domestic matters as feathers in the scale beside the day’s victory.  They promenaded under the lurid July sun, this pair, so wide apart, yet so near, and Sophy saw the large proportion of boys like her own, in their broad white collars and dwarf hats, and all around the rows of great coaches under which was jumbled the débris of luxurious luncheons; bones, pie-crusts, champagne-bottles, glasses, plates, napkins, and the family silver; while on the coaches sat the proud fathers and mothers; but never a poor mother like her.  If Randolph had not appertained to these, had not centred all his interests in them, had not cared exclusively for the class they belonged to, how happy would things have been!  A great huzza at some small performance with the bat burst from the multitude of relatives, and Randolph jumped wildly into the air to see what had happened.  Sophy fetched up the sentence that had been already shaped; but she could not get it out.  The occasion was, perhaps, an inopportune one.  The contrast between her story and the display of fashion to which Randolph had grown to regard himself as akin would be fatal.  She awaited a better time.

It was on an evening when they were alone in their plain suburban residence, where life was not blue but brown, that she ultimately broke silence, qualifying her announcement of a probable second marriage by assuring him that it would not take place for a long time to come, when he would be living quite independently of her.

The boy thought the idea a very reasonable one, and asked if she had chosen anybody?  She hesitated; and he seemed to have a misgiving.  He hoped his stepfather would be a gentleman? he said.

‘Not what you call a gentleman,’ she answered timidly.  ‘He’ll be much as I was before I knew your father;’ and by degrees she acquainted him with the whole.  The youth’s face remained fixed for a moment; then he flushed, leant on the table, and burst into passionate tears.

His mother went up to him, kissed all of his face that she could get at, and patted his back as if he were still the baby he once had been, crying herself the while.  When he had somewhat recovered from his paroxysm he went hastily to his own room and fastened the door.

Parleyings were attempted through the keyhole, outside which she waited and listened.  It was long before he would reply, and when he did it was to say sternly at her from within: ‘I am ashamed of you!  It will ruin me!  A miserable boor! a churl! a clown!  It will degrade me in the eyes of all the gentlemen of England!’

‘Say no more—perhaps I am wrong!  I will struggle against it!’ she cried miserably.

Before Randolph left her that summer a letter arrived from Sam to inform her that he had been unexpectedly fortunate in obtaining the shop.  He was in possession; it was the largest in the town, combining fruit with vegetables, and he thought it would form a home worthy even of her some day.  Might he not run up to town to see her?

She met him by stealth, and said he must still wait for her final answer.  The autumn dragged on, and when Randolph was home at Christmas for the holidays she broached the matter again.  But the young gentleman was inexorable.

It was dropped for months; renewed again; abandoned under his repugnance; again attempted; and thus the gentle