Muttering a word of apology, he rushed out of the shop and across the road.

“Ellen!” he gasped hoarsely, “you’ve never gone and left my little girl alone in the house with the lodger?”

Mrs. Bunting’s face went yellow with fear.  “I thought you was indoors,” she cried.  “You was indoors!  Whatever made you come out for, without first making sure I’d stay in?”

Bunting made no answer; but, as they stared at each other in exasperated silence, each now knew that the other knew.

They turned and scurried down the crowded street.  “Don’t run,” he said suddenly; “we shall get there just as quickly if we walk fast.  People are noticing you, Ellen.  Don’t run.”

He spoke breathlessly, but it was breathlessness induced by fear and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which they were walking.

At last they reached their own gate, and Bunting pushed past in front of his wife.

After all, Daisy was his child; Ellen couldn’t know how he was feeling.

He seemed to take the path in one leap, then fumbled for a moment with his latchkey.

Opening wide the door, “Daisy!” he called out, in a wailing voice, “Daisy, my dear! where are you?”

“Here I am, father.  What is it?”

“She’s all right.”  Bunting turned a grey face to his wife.  “She’s all right, Ellen.”

He waited a moment, leaning against the wall of the passage.  “It did give me a turn,” he said, and then, warningly, “Don’t frighten the girl, Ellen.”

Daisy was standing before the fire in their sitting room, admiring herself in the glass.

“Oh, father,” she exclaimed, without turning round, “I’ve seen the lodger!  He’s quite a nice gentleman, though, to be sure, he does look a cure.  He rang his bell, but I didn’t like to go up; and so he came down to ask Ellen for something.  We had quite a nice little chat—­that we had.  I told him it was my birthday, and he asked me and Ellen to go to Madame Tussaud’s with him this afternoon.”  She laughed, a little self-consciously.  “Of course, I could see he was ’centric, and then at first he spoke so funnily.  ‘And who be you?’ he says, threatening-like.  And I says to him, ‘I’m Mr. Bunting’s daughter, sir.’  ’Then you’re a very fortunate girl’—­that’s what he says, Ellen—­’to ’ave such a nice stepmother as you’ve got.  That’s why,’ he says, ’you look such a good, innocent girl.’  And then he quoted a bit of the Prayer Book.  ‘Keep innocency,’ he says, wagging his head at me.  Lor’!  It made me feel as if I was with Old Aunt again.”

“I won’t have you going out with the lodger—­that’s flat.”

Bunting spoke in a muffled, angry tone.  He was wiping his forehead with one hand, while with the other he mechanically squeezed the little packet of tobacco, for which, as he now remembered, he had forgotten to pay.

Daisy pouted.  “Oh, father, I think you might let me have a treat on my birthday!  I told him that Saturday wasn’t a very good day—­ at least, so I’d heard—­for Madame Tussaud’s.  Then he said we could go early, while the fine folk are still having their dinners.”  She turned to her stepmother, then giggled happily.  “He particularly said you was to come, too.  The lodger has a wonderful fancy for you, Ellen; if I was father, I’d feel quite jealous!”