Mr. Polly found the plump woman in the big bricked kitchen lighting a fire for tea. He went to the root of the matter at once.

“I say,” he asked, “who’s Uncle Jim?”

The plump woman blanched and stood still for a moment. A stick fell out of the bundle in her hand unheeded.

“That little granddaughter of mine been saying things?” she asked faintly.

“Bits of things,” said Mr. Polly.

“Well, I suppose I must tell you sooner or later. He’s —. It’s Jim. He’s the Drorback to this place, that’s what he is. The Drorback. I hoped you mightn’t hear so soon. . . . Very likely he’s gone.”

“She don’t seem to think so.”

“‘E ‘asn’t been near the place these two weeks and more,” said the plump woman.

“But who is he?”

“I suppose I got to tell you,” said the plump woman.

“She says he scoots people,” Mr. Polly remarked after a pause.

“He’s my own sister’s son.” The plump woman watched the crackling fire for a space. “I suppose I got to tell you,” she repeated.

She softened towards tears. “I try not to think of it, and night and day he’s haunting me. I try not to think of it. I’ve been for easy-going all my life. But I’m that worried and afraid, with death and ruin threatened and evil all about me! I don’t know what to do! My own sister’s son, and me a widow woman and ‘elpless against his doin’s!”

She put down the sticks she held upon the fender, and felt for her handkerchief. She began to sob and talk quickly.

“I wouldn’t mind nothing else half so much if he’d leave that child alone. But he goes talking to her — if I leave her a moment he’s talking to her, teaching her words and giving her ideas!”

“That’s a Bit Thick,” said Mr. Polly.

“Thick!” cried the plump woman; “it’s ‘orrible! And what am I to do? He’s been here three times now, six days and a week and a part of a week, and I pray to God night and day he may never come again. Praying! Back he’s come sure as fate. He takes my money and he takes my things. He won’t let no man stay here to protect me or do the boats or work the ferry. The ferry’s getting a scandal. They stand and shout and scream and use language. . . . If I complain they’ll say I’m helpless to manage here, they’ll take away my license, out I shall go — and it’s all the living I can get — and he knows it, and he plays on it, and he don’t care. And here I am. I’d send the child away, but I got nowhere to send the child. I buys him off when it comes to that, and back he comes, worse than ever, prowling round and doing evil. And not a soul to help me. Not a soul! I just hoped there might be a day or so. Before he comes back again. I was just hoping — I’m the sort that hopes.”

Mr. Polly was reflecting on the flaws and drawbacks that seem to be inseparable from all the more agreeable things in life.

“Biggish sort of man, I expect?” asked Mr. Polly, trying to get the situation in all its bearings.

But the plump woman did not heed him. She was going on with her fire-making, and retailing in disconnected fragments the fearfulness of Uncle Jim.

“There was always something a bit wrong with him,” she said, “but nothing you mightn’t have hoped for, not till they took him and carried him off and reformed him. . . .

“He was cruel to the hens and chickings, it’s true, and stuck a knife into another boy, but then I’ve seen him that nice to a cat, nobody could have been kinder. I’m sure he didn’t do no ‘arm to that cat whatever anyone tries to make out of it. I’d never listen to that. . . . It was that reformatory ruined him. They put him along of a lot of London boys full of ideas of wickedness, and because he didn’t mind pain — and he don’t, I will admit, try as I would — they made him think himself a hero. Them boys laughed at the teachers they set over them, laughed and mocked at them — and I don’t suppose they was the best teachers in the world; I don’t suppose, and I don’t suppose anyone sensible does suppose that everyone who goes to be a teacher or a ............