'Who do you take me for, Dick? I wasn't born yesterday. A devilish pretty
woman, if you ask me. What hair!--like velvet!'

Kate stopped. 'Black hair,' she said to herself--'they must be talking of
me,' and she listened intently.

The remark, however, did not appear to have been particularly well-timed,
for after a long silence, a woman's voice said:

'Well, I don't know whether he liked her, and I don't care, but what I'm
not going to do is to wait here listening to you all cracking up a
landlady's good looks. I'm off.'

A scuffle then seemed to be taking place; half a dozen voices spoke
together, and in terror of her life Kate flew across the workroom to Mrs.
Ede's bed.

The door of the sitting-room was flung open and cajoling and protesting
words echoed along the passage up and down the staircase. It was
disgraceful, and Kate expected every minute to hear her mother-in-law's
voice mingling in the fray; but peace was restored, and for at least an
hour she listened to sounds of laughing voices mingling with the clinking
of glasses. At last Dick wished his friends good-night, and Kate lay under
the sheets and listened. Something was going to happen. 'He thinks me a
pretty woman; she is jealous,' were phrases that rang without ceasing in
her ears. Then, hearing his door open, she fancied he was coming to seek
her, and in consternation buried herself under the bedclothes, leaving only
her black hair over the pillows to show where she had disappeared. But the
duplicate drop of a pair of boots was conclusive, and assuring herself that
he would not venture on such a liberty, she strove to compose herself to