The mother glanced doubtfully at her future husband, but Marr again
spoke with emphasis.

"Yes, I do object. If you don't mind me saying it, I'm quite able to
look after the little girl; and the fact is, I want her to grow up
looking to me as her father, and getting all she has from me only.
Of course, I mean nothing but what's friendly: but there it is; I'd
rather Winnie didn't have the money."

This man was in the habit of speaking his mind; Hilliard understood
that any insistence would only disturb the harmony of the occasion.
He waved a hand, smiled good-naturedly, and said no more.

About nine o'clock he left the house and walked to Aston Church.
While he stood there, waiting for the tram, a voice fell upon his
ear that caused him to look round. Crouched by the entrance to the
churchyard was a beggar in filthy rags, his face hideously bandaged,
before him on the pavement a little heap of matchboxes; this
creature kept uttering a meaningless sing-song, either idiot jabber,
or calculated to excite attention and pity; it sounded something
like "A-pah-pahky; pah-pahky; pah"; repeated a score of times, and
resumed after a pause. Hilliard gazed and listened, then placed a
copper in the wretch's extended palm, and turned away muttering,
"What a cursed world!"

He was again on the tram-car before he observed that the full moon,
risen into a sky now clear of grosser vapours, gleamed brilliant
silver above the mean lights of earth. And round about it, in so
vast a circumference that it was only detected by the wandering eye,