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expression⁠—more worried even than the expression he had already noticed in the eyes of the tired men who had sat opposite him in the bus which had brought him here. He had a silver watchchain across his rumpled waistcoat, and on his feet were shapeless carpet slippers, above which showed heather mixture socks sagging garterless round his ankles. Beside him, uncomplaining and uncomfortable on one of the bentwood chairs, sat his wife, frail, pale and shabby; the most noticeable thing about her was her lopsided steel rimmed spectacles. The children were only visible to him when he turned his head uncomfortably. They certainly were more attractive. The little girl, Winnie, bore in her sharp features undeniable promise of good looks, as she sat with her hands in her lap beside the table, and the boy⁠—John, wasn’t he?⁠—was quite a fair specimen of the fourteen-year-old. Nevertheless, young Medland did not feel at all at ease in his present situation. Six weeks on board a first-class liner, the only male passenger unmarried between the ages of fifteen and fifty is not the best introduction to the life of a poverty-stricken suburban home. Medland felt the sudden need to think about something else.

“May I smoke?” he asked.

“Why, yes, of course,” said Mr. Marble, rousing himself suddenly to his hospitable duties.

Mr. Marble plunged into his pocket in search of the battered yellow packet of cigarettes that lay there. It held three cigarettes, he knew, and he had been treasuring them to smoke himself later in the evening. He spent as long as he could before producing them, and he was successful in his tactics. Medland already had produced his case and was offering it to him.

It was a leather case, the parting gift of one of the middle-aged women on the boat. Women never realize that a leather case spoils cigarettes. But this was far more than a cigarette case. It was a substantial wallet, with pockets for stamps and visiting cards, and at the back, sagging open in consequence of the way in which Medland held it, was a compartment for money. And this was full. Marble noticed, as the case was tendered to him, a thick fold of Treasury notes, twenty pounds at least, maybe thirty, decided Marble, gauging it with a bank clerk’s eye. Beside it was another fold of banknotes⁠—five pound notes, most probably. The sight positively dazzled poor Mr. Marble’s vision. And it brought, too, a ray of hope into the grim cells of dumb despair in his soul. It was more than flesh and blood could bear not to remark on it.

“That’s a nice case,” said Mr. Marble, tendering a lighted match to his guest.

“Yes.” Medland drew on his cigarette to make sure it was well lighted. “It was a present,” he added modestly, and he held it out so that his uncle could see it more freely.

The banknotes flashed once more before Marble’s tortured eyes.

“Well lined too,” said Marble, striving to keep the envy out of his tone.

“Yes, I got them at Port Said⁠—oh, you mean the notes?” Medland did his best not to show surprise at his uncle’s bad taste. To assist in this he went into even further explanation. “I had to cash one of my letters of credit as soon as I got to London. The voyage left me without a bean, pretty nearly, and what I had was Australian money, of course.”

It was an idle enough speech, but it sufficed to set Mr. Marble thinking rapidly and unsteadily. This boy had arrived just in time to save him. He surely would not deny his newfound uncle a loan? Those Treasury notes would save him, let alone the banknotes. And a loan from a nephew was not the same thing at all as a debt to that devil Evans, who would be putting the bailiffs in directly. It was not even in the same class as a debt to those men at the office, to repay whom only enough to keep them from complaining to higher officials had absorbed all his month’s salary. On the heels of these thoughts came appalling realization of the peril of his position. It was the third of the month only, and he had ten shillings in the world with which to stave off his creditors and to support his family until his next payday. Before this he had shut his eyes to the position with all the small resolution he possessed. But now that there was a chance of escape the danger in which he stood was forced home upon him, making him shudder involuntarily a little and setting his heart thumping heavily in his chest. Mechanically he glanced across at the sideboard in which was the decanter. But he checked himself. He was not going to have to waste one of his last three⁠—or was it four?⁠—drinks on this boy. He thrust the thought of the whisky fiercely on one side and turned to making cautious advances towards the nephew.

“Did you have much difficulty in finding your way here?” he asked⁠—the inevitable question always addressed to the newcomer to the suburbs.

“Oh, no,” replied Medland. “I had your address, of course, mother dug it up from your old letters before she died. So I knew it was Dulwich, and in Trafalgar Square I saw dozens of buses all going to Dulwich, and I got on one and came as far as the terminus. Then it was easy. The first person I asked told me the way to Malcolm Road.”

“Just so. And where did you say you were staying?”

Medland had not said he was staying anywhere, but he told him. It was a substantial Strand hotel. It was then that Medland, apropos of this, made the remark that was to alter everything.

“It’s funny to think of,” he said, striving to keep the conversation going, “but besides you there isn’t a soul in England who knows anything about me. I don’t think I was in the hotel more than an