was trembling.

"Of course it's not what you've been accustomed to, Maggie," said the
man in grey; "but it's only for a little while."

He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back
being to the light.

My mother drew his arms around us both.

"It is the best home in all the world," she said; and thus we stayed
for awhile.

"Nonsense," said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; "it's a poky
hole, as I told her it would be. Let her thank the Lord she's got a
man clever enough to get her out of it. I know him; he never could
rest where he was put. Now he's at the bottom; he'll go up."

It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man
laughed--I had not heard him laugh till then--and my mother ran to my
aunt and kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.

For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a
screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in
the evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued
voices awoke me. My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and
the man in grey were talking together over their supper.

"We must buy land," said the voice of the grey man; "London is coming
this way. The Somebodies" (I forget the name my father mentioned)