Very punctually did the visitor arrive that evening.  He entered the room with that same look of embarrassment which he had worn during the brief colloquy at Kew; he shook hands awkwardly, and, as he seated himself, talked about the fall of temperature since sunset, which made a fire agreeable.  Warburton, ashamed of the sullenness he could not overcome, rolled this way and that in his chair, holding the poker and making lunges with it at a piece of coal which would not break.

“That was a lucky chance,” began Franks at length, “our meeting this afternoon.”

“Lucky?  Why?”

“Because it has given me the courage to speak to you about something.  Queerest chance I ever knew that you should be there close by the Crosses.”

“Did they ask who I was?” inquired Warburton after a violent lunge with the poker, which sent pieces of coal flying into the room.

“They didn’t happen to see me whilst I was talking with you.  But, in any case,” added Franks, “they wouldn’t have asked.  They’re well-bred people, you know—­really ladies.  I suspect you’ve had a different idea of them.  Wasn’t that why you wouldn’t let me introduce you?”

“Not at all,” answered Will, with a forced laugh.  “I’ve no doubt of their ladyhood.”

“The fact of the matter is,” continued the other, crossing and uncrossing, and re-crossing his legs in nervous restlessness, “that I’ve been seeing them now and then since I told you I was going to call there.  You guess why?  It isn’t Mrs. Cross, depend upon it.”

“Mrs. Cross’s tea, perhaps?” said Will, with a hard grin.

“Not exactly.  It’s the worst tea I ever tasted.  I must advise her to change her grocer.”

Warburton exploded in a roar of laughter, and cried, as Franks stared wonderingly at him: 

“You’ll never make a better joke in your life than that.”

“Shows what I can do when I try,” answered the artist.  “However, the tea is shockingly bad.”

“What can you expect for one and sevenpence halfpenny per pound?” cried Will.

“How do you know what she pays?”

Warburton’s answer was another peal of merriment.

“Well, I shouldn’t wonder,” Franks went on.  “The fact is, you know, they’re very poor.  It’s a miserable sort of a life for a girl like Bertha Cross.  She’s clever, in her way; did you ever see any of her work?  Children’s book-illustrating?  It’s more than passable, I assure you.  But of course she’s wretchedly paid.  Apart from that, a really nice girl.”

“So this is what you had to tell me?” said Warburton, in a subdued voice, when the speaker hesitated.

“I wanted to talk about it, old man, that’s the truth.”

Franks accompanied these words with a shy smiling look of such friendly appeal that Will felt his hard and surly humour begin to soften, and something of the old geniality stirring under the dull weight that had so long oppressed him.