But gradually the wave of bitterness waned.  He found himself listening placidly and attentively to the joyous trills and roulades of the canary, till the light faded and the grey dusk crept into the room and stilled the tiny winged lover of the sunshine.  Then Beethoven came and rubbed himself against his master’s leg, and Lancelot got up, as one wakes from a dream, and stretched his cramped limbs dazedly, and rang the bell mechanically for tea.  He was groping on the mantel-piece for the matches when the knock at the door came, and he did not turn round till he had found them.  He struck a light, expecting to see Mrs. Leadbatter or Rosie.  He started to find it was merely Mary Ann.

But she was no longer merely Mary Ann, he remembered with another shock.  She loomed large to him in the match-light—­he seemed to see her through a golden haze.  Tumultuous images of her glorified gilded future rose and mingled dizzily in his brain.

And yet, was he dreaming?  Surely it was the same Mary Ann, with the same winsome face and the same large pathetic eyes, ringed though they were with the shadow of tears.  Mary Ann, in her neat white cap—­yes—­and in her tan kid gloves.  He rubbed his eyes.  Was he really awake?  Or—­a thought still more dizzying—­had he been dreaming?  He had fallen asleep and reinless fancy had played him the fantastic trick, from which, cramped and dazed, he had just awakened to the old sweet reality.

“Mary Ann!” he cried wildly.  The lighted match fell from his fingers and burnt itself out unheeded on the carpet.

“Yessir.”

“Is it true”—­his emotion choked him—­“is it true you’ve come into two and a half million dollars?”

“Yessir, and I’ve brought you some tea.”

The room was dark, but darkness seemed to fall on it as she spoke.

“But why are you waiting on me, then?” he said slowly.  “Don’t you know that you—­that you—­”

“Please, Mr. Lancelot, I wanted to come in and see you.”

He felt himself trembling.

“But Mrs. Leadbatter told me she wouldn’t let you do any more work.”

“I told missus that I must; I told her she couldn’t get another girl before Monday, if then, and if she didn’t let me I wouldn’t buy a new dress and a pair of boots with her sovereign—­it isn’t suvrin, is it, sir?”

“No,” murmured Lancelot, smiling in spite of himself.

“With her sovereign.  And I said I would be all dirty on Monday.”

“But what can you get for a sovereign?” he asked irrelevantly.  He felt his mind wandering away from him.

“Oh, ever such a pretty dress!”

The picture of Mary Ann in a pretty dress painted itself upon the darkness.  How lovely the child would look in some creamy white evening dress with a rose in her hair.  He wondered that in all his thoughts of their future he had never dressed her up thus in fancy, to feast his eyes on the vision.