It was a terrific price to pay; their troubled faces mirrored the
conflict of decision.

David found solution. In his slow, solemn voice, "You kiss him first,"
he said. Miss Humfray always took their medicine first, and David
argued from the one evil necessity to this other.

Mr. Bob Chater laughed delightedly. "That's a brilliant idea!" he
cried; came two strides towards Mary; put a hand upon her arm.

So sudden, so unexpected was his movement, that by the narrowest
chance only did she escape his purpose. A jerk of her head, and he had
mouthed at the air two inches from her face.

She shook her arm free. "Oh!" she cried; and in the exclamation there
was that which would have given a nicer man pause.

Mr. Bob Chater was nothing abashed. A handsome face and a bold air had
made conquests easy to him. It was an axiom of his that a girl who
worked for her living by that fact proclaimed flirtation to be
agreeable to her--at all events with such as he. Chance had so shaped
affairs that this was the first time his theory had found disproof. He
saw she was offended; so much the more tickling; conquest was thereby
the more enticing.

He laughed; said he was only "rotting."

Mary did not reply. The command to kiss their brother went by default;
she hurried her charges through the door to the adjoining night
nursery.