Jimmie crept up beside him, looking at him with big black, reverential eyes.  Then he leaned against him with a quick smile and closed his eyes ecstatically.  Frank put an arm round the boy to support him.

“Oh!  Gertie’s gone to see a friend,” said the Major.  “Did you want her?”

Frank said nothing, and Mrs. Partington looked from one to the other swiftly.

Mrs. Partington had gathered a little food for thought during the last few days.  It had become perfectly evident to her that the girl was very much in love with this young man, and that while this young man either was, or affected to be, ignorant of it, the Major was not.  Gertie had odd silences when Frank came into the room, or yet more odd volubilities, and Mrs. Partington was not quite sure of the Major’s attitude.  This officer and her husband had had dealings together in the past of a nature which I could not quite determine (indeed, the figure of Mr. Partington is still a complete mystery to me, and rather a formidable mystery); and I gather that Mrs. Partington had learned from her husband that the Major was not simply negligible.  She knew him for a blackguard, but she seems to have been uncertain of what kind was this black-guardism—­whether of the strong or the weak variety.  She was just a little uncomfortable, therefore, as to the significance of Gertie; and had already wondered more than once whether or no she should say a motherly word to the young man.

* * * * *

There came a sound of footsteps up the street as Mrs. Partington ironed a collar of Jimmie’s on the dining-room table, and laid down the iron as a tap fell on the door.  The Major took out his pipe and began to fill it as she went out to see who was knocking.

“Oh! good evening, Mrs. Partington,” sounded in a clear, high-bred voice from the street door.  “May I come in for a minute or two?  I heard you had lodgers, and I thought perhaps—­”

“Well, sir, we’re rather upside-down just now—­and—­”

“Oh!  I won’t disturb you more than a minute,” came the other voice again.  There were footsteps in the passage, and the next instant, past the unwilling hostess, there came a young, fresh-colored clergyman, carrying a silk hat, into the lamplight of the kitchen.  Frank stood up instantly, and the Major went so far as to take down his feet.  Then he, too, stood up.

“Good evening!” said the clergyman.  “May I just come in for a minute or two?  I heard you had come, and as it’s in my district—­May I sit down, Mrs. Partington?”

Mrs. Partington with sternly knit lips, swept a brown teapot, a stocking, a comb, a cup and a crumby plate off the single unoccupied chair, and set it a little forward near the fire.  Clergymen were, to her mind, one of those mysterious dispensations of the world for which there was no adequate explanation at all—­like policemen and men’s gamblings and horse-races.  There they were, and there was