TO-MORROW
Page: 19

step inside your gate."

"Come in," she said.

He entered then the front garden of the Carvils.
His tall shadow strode with a swagger; she turned
her back on the window and waited, watching the
shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most mate-
rial part. The light fell on a tilted hat; a power-
ful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the darkness;
on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood
still, facing the illuminated parlour window at her
back, turning his head from side to side, laughing
softly to himself.

"Just fancy, for a minute, the old man's beard
stuck on to my chin. Hey? Now say. I was the
very spit of him from a boy."

"It's true," she murmured to herself.

"And that's about as far as it goes. He was al-
ways one of your domestic characters. Why, I re-
member how he used to go about looking very sick
for three days before he had to leave home on one
of his trips to South Shields for coal. He had a
standing charter from the gas-works. You would
think he was off on a whaling cruise--three years
and a tail. Ha, ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on
the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas was a smart
craft. Fine name, wasn't it? Mother's uncle
owned her. . . ."

He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice,
"Did he ever tell you what mother died of?" he
asked.

"Yes," said Miss Bessie, bitterly; "from impa-
tience."

He made no sound for a while; then brusquely:
"They were so afraid I would turn out badly that
they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me
for being idle, and the old man said he would cut
my soul out of my body rather than let me go to
sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it too--so I
went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been
born to them by a mistake--in that other hutch of
a house."

"Where ought you to have been born by
rights?" Bessie Carvil interrupted him, defiantly.

"In the open, upon a beach, on a windy night,"
he said, quick as lightning. Then he mused slowly.
"They were characters, both of them, by George;
and the old man keeps it up well--don't he? A
damned shovel on the--Hark! who's that mak-