that situation. But tide it over she did, and by supernatural effort
and watchfulness she contrived to soothe Mrs. Bowse until she had been
in the house long enough to make friends with people and aid her
father to realize that, if they went elsewhere, they might find only
the same class of boarders, and there would be the cost of moving to
consider. She had beguiled an armchair from Mrs. Bowse, and had re-
covered it herself with a remnant of crimson stuff secured from a
miscellaneous heap at a marked-down sale at a department store. She
had arranged his books and papers adroitly and had kept them in their
places so that he never felt himself obliged to search for any one of
them. With many little contrivances she had given his bed-sitting-room
a look of comfort and established homeliness, and he had even begun to
like it.

"Tha't just like tha mother, Ann," he had said. "She'd make a railway
station look as if it had been lived in."

Then Tembarom had appeared, heralded by Mrs. Bowse and the G.
Destroyer, and the first time their eyes had met across the table she
had liked him. The liking had increased. There was that in his boyish
cheer and his not-too-well-fed-looking face which called forth
maternal interest. As she gradually learned what his life had been,
she felt a thrilled anxiety to hear day by day how he was getting on.
She listened for details, and felt it necessary to gather herself
together in the face of a slight depression when hopes of Galton were
less high than usual. His mending was mysteriously done, and in time
he knew with amazed gratitude that he was being "looked after." His
first thanks were so awkward, but so full of appreciation of
unaccustomed luxury, that they almost brought tears to her eyes, since
they so clearly illuminated the entire novelty of any attention