“You must pay the penalty of your eloquence by seeing your audience drowned in tears,” she said lightly.  Then, rolling up the remainder of the furs, she left the stockroom and returned to the store, whither Mr. Selincourt followed her; and as there were no customers he sat on a box and talked on, as if it were a real pleasure to have found a sympathetic listener.

“Those two years of struggle, of disappointment and bitter poverty, have had their uses,” he said, in a meditative fashion, as he sat looking out through the door, which Katherine had unlocked again.  His gaze was on the river, which sparkled and gleamed in the sunshine, but his thoughts were far away.

Katherine answered only by a splitting, rending noise, as she tore a piece of calico.  But that did not matter, because he was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to need other speech just then.

“Perhaps if I had not been poor myself I should not have had sympathy with other men who were in the slough and couldn’t get out,” he said, speaking as much to himself as to Katherine.

“It is fine to be able to help other people,” she replied, cutting the next piece of calico to avoid making so much noise.

“Yes, but I think no one realizes the full blessing of it who has not known in his own person what it is to be in trouble and to be helped himself,” he said, his tone still dreamy, and his gaze on the hurrying water.

“Have you helped a great many?” she asked softly.

“A few,” he answered.  “Some have been disappointments, of course, and once or twice I have been robbed for my pains; but I have had my compensations, especially in Archie Raymond and Jervis Ferrars.”

“Who is Archie Raymond?” demanded Katherine, who was measuring calico as rapidly, and with as much dexterity, as if she had served an apprenticeship behind a drapery counter, instead of having been trained for teaching.

Mr. Selincourt brought his gaze from the river, jerking his head round to get a good view of Katherine; then he asked, in a surprised tone:  “Hasn’t Mary told you about him?  I thought girls always talked to each other about such things.”

“What things?” asked Katherine.

“Why, sweethearts, and all that sort of stuff,” he answered vaguely.

Katherine flushed, caught her breath in a little gasp, and, clenching the hand which held the calico, said rather unsteadily:  “Mary and I have certainly not discussed sweethearts and that sort of stuff, as you call it.”

Mr. Selincourt laughed in great amusement, then said more gravely:  “Mary has been very much spoiled, and in all her life she has never been denied anything save one, as I told you before, and I am hoping very much that it will all come right for her yet, when she has learned her lesson of patient waiting.”

Katherine dropped her calico, and, nerving herself for a great effort of endurance, said:  “Won’t you tell me what you mean?  I never could understand hints and vague suggestions about things.”