"It was a mistake, Dick, to get into a huff as you did. The minute she began to speak you took her up sharp-and if there's one thing more than another that puts her back up it is to be took up sharp. You see, Dick, it's a delicate matter. Aunt Rob says, 'We must think of Florence. She comes first.' And she's right, Dick."

"She is, uncle. Florence comes first-always first!"

"'Here's Dick,' says Aunt Rob, 'that I'm as fond of as if he was my own son, what is he good for? What prospects has he got? He's been in one situation and another, and never keeps to one thing for more than a few weeks at a time. Here he is, a grown man, and here is Florence, almost a grown woman.' To think of it!" said Inspector Robson, pensively, breaking off. "It was only yesterday that she was in short frocks, going backward and forward to school, and climbing up on my knee to pull my whiskers, and cuddling up in my arms, and singing her little songs in a voice as sweet as music. And now! a grown woman! To think of it-to think of it!"

"Loving you no less as a woman, uncle, than she did as a child."

"I know it, my lad, I know it, but it sets a man on the think."

And Inspector Robson fell forthwith into a brown study which lasted quite five minutes, during which the image of his only child, most tenderly and dearly beloved, presented itself to him in its sweetest and most engaging aspects.

CHAPTER VIII
AUNT ROB THINKS FLORENCE OUGHT TO MARRY A MARQUIS OR A PRINCE

Dick Remington waited patiently to hear the full sum of the reproaches which Aunt Rob brought against him. He, too, saw with his mind's eye the image of the young girl for whom he would have laid down his life, and if his thoughts of her brought a pang to his heart they were at the same time charged with exceeding tenderness.

Inspector Robson shook himself free from dreams, and returned to his subject.

"That is what Aunt Rob says. 'Here is Dick a grown man, and here is Florence almost a grown woman. When Dick comes down in the morning he kisses Florence and she kisses him; and when he bids her good night he kisses her again. And,' says Aunt Rob, 'I don't know that this is a thing that ought to be allowed to go on.' I dare say it's puzzled other people as well as us when kissing ought to be left off. So long as you were little it was as natural as natural could be. You were playmates and chums, and you rolled on the floor together and played coach and horses and London Bridge is Falling Down, and you'd carry her on your shoulder and lift her as high as the ceiling, and throw her up and catch her, she screaming with delight and crying, 'Again, Dick, again!' You grew up, Dick, and when you were eighteen Florence was only twelve, and the kissing went on, and there was nothing to object to. But you got to be twenty and Florence fourteen, and the kissing went on. Then her frocks were lengthened, and the pair of you continued to grow up till she was nineteen and you twenty-five-and all this time the kissing went on. Now, Dick, there must come a time when, even between cousins, kissing must stop. Sometimes it's done gradual, sometimes all of a sudden, which makes things a bit awkward-but one way or the other it's got to be done. You must see that yourself, Dick."

"Yes, I suppose so, uncle."

"And Aunt Rob has got an eye to the future. Pretty girls like Florence don't grow on every gooseberry bush. Show me the girl that can compare with her. Do you know of one, Dick?"

"Not one in all the wide world," replied the young man. "God bless her, and make her happy!"

"She's been brought up sensible," said Inspector Robson. "She can make a beef steak pudding and play the piano; there's nothing she can't turn her hand to, and the man that gets her will be a lucky chap. Aunt Rob thinks a gentleman born would not be too good for her. 'Why not say a marquis, or a prince?' says I to her, speaking sarcastic like. And she bridles up and answers, 'Why not? He might do worse; he couldn't do better.'"

"No gentleman in the land," said Dick, with a tremor in his voice, "could be too good for Florence. She's equal to the best, and could hold her own among the best, even if they were born in a palace."

"That's what Aunt Rob thinks," said Inspector Robson, his eyes glowing with loving pride, "and that's what we all think, and who that knows Florence could think differently? But let's come back to you, Dick, for that's the main point. Why don't you stick to one thing, my lad?"

"Perhaps because it won't stick to me," Dick replied.

"Nonsense, nonsense, lad, it's the other way about. Do you recollect the morning you went to your first situation, and how we all stood at the street door to see you off? There was Florence and Aunt Rob waving their handkerchiefs and kissing their hands to you till you were out of sight. You kept that situation seven months, and then you threw it up. You didn't like the place, you said. All right. You got another situation, as traveller on commission in the sewing machine line. You commenced well, and was earning your fifteen shillings a week. What was our surprise when you came home one night and told us you'd left because it wouldn't suit you? The next thing you took to was the stage, and you gave us tickets to come and see you act. We rehearsed at home, and Florence gave you the cues. As for your make-up as you call it, you did it so cleverly that we didn't know you when you come on the stage. 'That's what he's cut out for,' I said. 'One of these days he'll have a theatre of his own.' But Aunt Rob shook her head. You wrote a little piece in one act, and got it played-actually got it played. We thought it beautiful, and the way Florence laughed and cried over it-well! But it wasn't a success for all that. Still, you know, Dick, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. You didn't try again. You gave up the stage-"

Dick interposed with, "Or it gave up me."

"Anyway you left it. Your next move was clerk to Mr. Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square."

"Ah!" said Dick, and there was a look of inquiry in his eyes as he fixed them upon the Inspector.

"You may well say 'Ah,' for from what's known of him he's not the kind of man one would be proud to serve. What made you go to him?"

"I was hard up, and had been trying for a couple of months to get in somewhere. I was curious about him, too: thought he would do for a character that I could make up like if I ever went on the stage, or could use if ever I wrote another play." He spoke with apparent carelessness, but with a covert observance of the Inspector while he gave this explanation.

"It didn't surprise me that you remained with him only three months. When you left him you took to writing for the papers, and we read your paragraphs and articles with wonder at your cleverness. You don't do much in that way now, Dick?"

"Not much," said Dick, with a smile, "but I haven't given it up entirely. There is always the future."

"Ah, Dick, Dick," said Inspector Robson, very seriously, "we don't live in the future, we live in the present. When we're hungry a future dinner won't satisfy our stomachs. Aunt Rob sums it up in three or four words. 'Dick's got no stability,' she says, and, against my will, I've come round to her way of thinking. I suppose, Dick, all this time you haven't saved a penny-eh?" The young man made no reply, and Inspector Robson cried, half angrily, half admiringly, "What business had you to be making us presents and bringing things home for Aunt Rob and me and Florence when you ought to have been looking after yourself? What did you do it for?' Here's Dick brought home an immense turkey,' says Aunt Rob to me at Christmas; and at other times, 'Here's that stupid Dick brought home a couple of chickens, or a veal and ham pie,' and I don't know what all. 'I wish,' says Aunt Rob, 'that you'd tell him to stop it, and put his money into the savings bank.' But not you! At the least mention of such a thing you fired up and wanted to know what we meant by it."

"I could not have acted differently," said Dick. "I was living upon you-yes, I was. You wouldn't take anything for my board and lodging, and I had to try and make it up in some way. It was little enough I did, but if I hadn't done that little I should have been ashamed to look you in the face. Besides, how many times have you said to me, 'Dick, you must be in want of a bit of pocket money,' and forced a half sovereign upon me, and sometimes more?"

"Welcome you were to it," said Inspector Robson, in his heartiest tone, "though it's my firm belief if you had a thousand a year you'd never have a shilling in your purse, you're that free with your money. A sailor come ashore after a two year's cruise is a fool to you." He paused a moment. "Dick, my lad, I've been too hard on you, in what I've said: I'm downright ashamed of myself."

"It isn't in you, and it isn't in Aunt Rob, to do anything of which you need be ashamed. I have been thoughtless and inconsiderate-"

"No, no, Dick!"

"Yes, yes, uncle. I've been too much wrapped up in myself, and given no thought to the best friends a young ne'er-do-well ever had. If I could only make it up to you!" He turned his face to the wall, so that the Inspector should not see the tears that rushed into his eyes.

"Dick, my lad," said Inspector Robson, "have you got yourself into any money difficulty? Say the word, and I'll see what we can do to get you out of it."

"What a trump you are!" exclaimed Dick. "No, uncle. I owe no one a shilling except you and Aunt Rob."

"Don't keep on harping on that string or you'll get my temper up. If it isn't money, is it a woman?"

"If you mean whether I've entangled myself with a woman, or done anything wrong that way, I can answer honestly, no."

"I knew it, my lad, I knew it," said Inspector Robson, triumphantly. "Whatever your faults may be I was sure there wasn't a bit of vice in you. And now I tell you what it is; you shall come home with me to-night, your room's ready for you, and I'll make it all right with Aunt Rob. Make it all right! It is all right. 'The place isn't the same, father,' she says to me, 'with Dick out of it.' If you knew how we've missed you, my lad, you'd grow an inch taller."

"Who is it that has kept my room ready for me?"

"Aunt Rob and Florence, to be sure."

"And Florence," whispered Dick to himself, a wave of exceeding tenderness flowing over him.

"Florence it was who said to Aunt Rob, 'Mother, we mustn't let Dick think when he comes back that we've been neglectful of him.' 'Of course not,' said Aunt Rob, and up they go to see that everything is sweet and clean. You know the pride that Aunt Rob takes in the house. You might eat off the floor. And there's Florence of a morning sweeping out your room, and looking in every corner for a speck of dust. There's the canary and the cage you gave her, and the goldfish-why, if they were her own little babies she couldn't look after them better. So home we go together, and we'll let bygones be bygones and commence afresh."

"No, uncle, I can't come home with you," said Dick, shaking his head. "I thank you from my heart, but it can't be."

"Not come home with me!" exclaimed Inspector Robson, in great astonishment. "Why, what's the matter with the lad? You don't mean it, Dick, surely!"

"I do mean it, uncle."

"Dick, Dick, Dick," said Inspector Robson, shaking a warning forefinger at the young man, "pride's a proper thing in the right place, but a deuced ugly thing when it makes us take crooked views. I say you shall come home with me. Do you know what kind of a night it is, lad? I wouldn't turn a dog out in such weather, unless it was a blind dog, and then it wouldn't matter much. Come, come, Dick, think better of it."

"Nothing can alter my resolution, uncle-nothing. I did not come here to-night to annoy you; I wanted a shelter, and I hoped the fog would clear; but it seems to have grown thicker. However, it can't last for ever. In three or four hours it will be morning, and then-"

"Go on. And then?"

"The night will be gone, and it will be day," said Dick, gaily.

"And to-morrow night?"

"It will be night again."

"And you'll sleep in Buckingham Palace, for it stands to reason a man must sleep somewhere, and they don't charge for beds there that I'm aware of. How's the treasury, lad?" Dick laughed. "It's no laughing matter. Here's a sovereign; it'll see through the week at all events."

"I'm not going to rob you, uncle," said Dick in a shaking voice.

Inspector Robson caught Dick's hand, forced it open, forced a sovereign into it, and closed the young man's fingers over it, holding the hand tight in his to prevent the money being returned. In the execution of a ruthless action the Inspector's muscles were of iron.

"If you drop it, or try to give it me back," he said, "I'll lock you up and charge you with loitering for an unlawful purpose. What will Florence think when she sees your name in the papers and my name charging you? Be sensible for once, Dick, if you've any feeling for her."

The blood rushed up into Dick's face, and he staggered as if he had been struck; but he recovered himself quickly, and was the same indolent, easy-mannered being as before.

"Thank you, uncle; I'll keep the sovereign. Before the week's out I daresay I shall get something to do. The mischief of it is, there's nothing stirring; stagnation's the order of the day. If I could hit upon something startling and be first in the field, I should get well paid for it. Would you object to my dashing on the colour in an article headed, 'A Night in an Inspector's Office.'? I think I could make it lurid."

Before the laughing Inspector could reply a constable entered, holding by the arm a poorly dressed woman of woebegone appearance. Her gestures, her sobs, the wild looks she cast around, were those of a woman driven to distraction. Clinging to her skirts was a little girl as woebegone and white-faced as her mother.

Inspector Robson instantly straightened himself; he was no longer a private individual, but an officer of the law prepared for duty in whatever complicated shape it presented itself.

"She's been here half-a-dozen times to-night, sir," said the constable, "and last night as well, and the night before. She's lost her husband, she says."

"My husband-my husband!" moaned the woman. "Find him for me-find him for me! He's gone, gone, gone! Merciful God! What has become of him?"

Inspector Robson saw at a glance that here before him was no woman maddened by drink, but a woman suffering from terrible distress; and by a motion of his hand he conveyed an order to the constable, who instantly took his hand from the woman's arm.

"What is your husband's name?" asked the Inspector in a gentle tone.

"Abel Death, sir. Oh, for God's sake find him for me-find him for me-find him for me!"

Tears rolled down her face and choked her voice. Every nerve in her body was quivering with anguish.

"How long has he been gone?" asked the Inspector.

"Five days, sir, five long, long days."

"Was he in employment?"

"Yes, sir, yes. Oh, what can have become of him?"

"What is the name of his employer?"

The agony the woman had endured overcame her, and she could not immediately reply.

"Mr. Samuel Boyd, sir, of Catchpole Square," said the child.