Mrs. Trubb happened on Ernie\'s mother next day in Church Street. The surgeon\'s wife, whenever she met Mrs. Edward Caspar, acted always deliberately on the assumption, which she knew to be unfounded, that relations between Ruth and her mother-in-law were normal.

"It\'s a nuisance this about Ernie," she now said. "Such a worry for Ruth."

The hard woman with the snow-white hair and fierce black eye-brows made a little sardonic moue.

"She\'s all right," she answered. "You needn\'t worry for her. There\'s a chap payin her rent."

Mrs. Trupp changed colour.

"I don\'t believe it," she said sharply.

"You mayn\'t believe it," retorted the other sourly. "It\'s true all the same. Alf\'s her landlord. He told me."

Mrs. Trupp, greatly perturbed, reported the matter to her husband. He tackled Alf, who at the moment was driving for his old employer again in the absence of the regular chauffeur.

Alf admitted readily enough that the charge against his sister-in-law was true.

"That\'s it, sir," he said. "It\'s that chap Burt. And he don\'t do what he done for nothin, I\'ll lay; a chap like that don\'t."

He produced his book from his pocket, and held it out for the other to see, half turning away with becoming modesty.

"I don\'t like it, sir—me own sister-in-law. And I\'ve said so to Reverend Spink. Makes talk, as they say. Still it\'s no concern of mine."

Mrs. Trupp, on hearing her husband\'s report, went down at once to see Ruth and point out the extraordinary unwisdom of her action.

Ruth met her, fierce and formidable as Mrs. Trupp had never known her.

"It\'s a lie," she said, deep and savage as a tigress.

"It may be," Mrs. Trupp admitted. "But Alfred did show Mr. Trupp his book. And the rent had been paid down to last Monday. I think you should ask Mr. Burt."

That evening when Joe came up Ruth straightway tackled him.

She was so cold, so terrible, that the engineer was frightened, and lied.

"Not as I\'d ha blamed you if you had," said Ruth relaxing ever so little. "It\'s not your fault I\'m put to it and shamed afore em all."

The bitterness of the position in which Ern had placed her was eating her heart away. That noon for the first time she had taken the three elder children to the public dinner for necessitous children at the school. Anne Caspar who had been there helping to serve had smirked.

When Joe saw that the weight of her anger was turned against Ernie and not him, he admitted his fault.

"A may ha done wrong," he said. "But A acted for the best. Didn\'t want to see you in young Alf\'s clutches."

"You bide here," Ruth said, "and keep house along o little Alice. I\'ll be back in a minute."

Hatless and just as she was, she marched up to the Manor-house.

"You were right, \'M," she told Mrs. Trupp. "It were Joe. He just tell me. Only I didn\'t knaw nothin of it."

"It\'ll never do for you to be in his debt, Ruth," said the lady.

"No," Ruth admitted sullenly.

Mrs. Trupp went to her escritoire and took out sixteen shillings. Ruth took it.

"Thank-you," was all she said, and she said that coldly. Then she returned home with the money and paid Joe.

An hour later Ernie came in.

Ruth was standing at the table waiting him, cold, tall, and inexorable.

"Anything?" she asked.

Surly in self-defence, he shook his head and sat down.

She gave him not so much as a crumb of sympathy.

"No good settin down," she told him. "You ain\'t done yet. You\'ll take that clock down to Goldmann\'s after dark, and you\'ll get sixteen shillings for it. If he won\'t give you that for it, you\'ll pop your own great coat."

Ernie stared at her. He was uncertain whether to show fight or not.

"Dad\'s clock?—what he give me when I married?"

"Yes. Dad\'s clock."

She regarded him with eyes in which resentment flamed sullenly.

"Can I feed six on the shilling a week he gives me—rent and all?"

Ernie went out and brought back the money. She took it without a word, and wrapping it up in a little bit of paper, left it at the Manor-house.

Mrs. Trupp, who was holding a council with Bess and Bobby Chislehurst, unwrapped the packet and showed the money.

"She\'s put something up the spout," said the sage Bobby.

The three talked the situation over. There was only one thing to be done. Somebody must go round to Mr. Pigott and intercede for Ernie. Bobby was selected.

"You\'ll get him round if anybody can," Bess told her colleague encouragingly.

Bobby, shaking a dubious head, went. Mr. Pigott, like everybody else in Old Town, was devoted to the young curate; but he presented a firm face now to the other\............