At ten o'clock next morning Tom Carringford appeared at the Langham.

"Miss Vincent said you were staying here, so I made bold to come," he explained, with a boyish frankness that immediately won over Mr. Vincent. "Please forgive me, and don't think it awfully cool of me to come so early. I was afraid I should miss you if I waited."

"I'm very glad to see you," Mr. Vincent said. "I knew your father well." And in a moment Tom was quite at his ease.

"What did you think of 'King John?'" he asked Margaret.

"It was splendid; and a theatre is a wonderful place. How can people call it wicked?"

"Well, they don't," he laughed, "unless they are idiots, then they do, perhaps," at which she laughed too, and thought of Hannah. "I expect the scenes with Arthur gave you a few bad moments, didn't they?" he asked.

"She wept," her father said, evidently amused at the recollection.

"That's all right." Tom beamed with satisfaction. She was a nice girl, he thought, so of course she wept; she ought to weep at seeing that sort of thing for the first time. Then he turned to Mr. Vincent. "My father would be glad to think I had seen you at last," he said; "he often wondered why you never turned up."

"I have not turned up anywhere for more than five-and-twenty years," Mr. Vincent answered. "If I had he would have seen me." He was looking at Tom with downright pleasure, at his six feet of growth and broad shoulders, at his frank face and clear blue eyes. This was the sort of boy that a man would like to have for a son, he thought; and then, after a moment's characteristic hesitation, he said: "Stringer told us that you went to Hindhead sometimes; perhaps one day you would get over and see us?"

"Should like it," said Tom, heartily.

"You have left Oxford, of course?"

"Oh yes, last year."

"Any ambitions?"

"Plenty. But I don't know whether they'll come to anything. I believe there'll be an unpaid under-secretaryship presently, and by-and-by I hope to get into the House. Politics are rather low down, you know, Miss Vincent, so they'll suit me. What did you think of Miss Hunstan? I saw her last night; she had fallen in love with you."

"Had she?" Margaret exclaimed, joyfully. "I'm so glad. I love her, though I only saw her for a moment."

"I'll tell her so. Every one does. My mother was devoted to her; that's one reason why I am. She's great fun, too, though, of course, she's getting on a bit," he added, with the splendid insolence of youth. "There's something more at the back of this visit," and he looked at Mr. Vincent. "I have been wondering if you are really going to-day?"

"By the 2.50 from Waterloo. We can't stay any longer."

"Well—I know this is daring; but couldn't you both come and lunch with me? I have my father's little house in Stratton Street, and should like to think you had been there. It would be very good of you."

Mr. Vincent shook his head. "No time."

"You'll have to lunch somewhere," Tom pleaded.

"Yes, but I must go to my lawyer's almost immediately, and one or two other places, and don't quite know how much time they'll take up."

"Are you going alone?"

"Yes."

"Then look here," Tom exclaimed, delighted at his own audacity, "if you are going to lawyers and people, couldn't I take Miss Vincent round and show her something? Picture-galleries, Tower of London, British Museum, Houses of Parliament, top of the Monument—that kind of thing, you know. We'd take a hansom, and put half London into a couple of hours."

"Could I, father—could I?" she asked, eagerly.

Mr. Vincent looked from one to the other. They were boy and girl, he thought—Tom was twenty-two and Margaret eighteen, a couple of wild children, and before either of them was born their fathers had been old friends. Why shouldn't they go out together?

"It's very kind of you," he said, "and it would prevent her from spending a dull morning."

"It sha'n't be dull if I can help it," Tom answered, triumphantly.

"I may really go?" Margaret cried and kissed her father. "Oh, father, you are a dear."

She was a dear, too, Tom thought, and so was the old man, as he described Mr. Vincent in his thoughts.

The "old man" had an idea of his own. "Bring Margaret back here and lunch with us," he said; "there might be just time enough for that, and we will go and see you on another occasion."

"Good—good!" And Margaret presently found out that this was his favorite expression. "It shall be as you say. Now, Miss Vincent, there's hard work before us." Five minutes later Mr. Vincent watched them start. They waved their hands to him from the hansom, and he turned away with a smile.

"The real thing to do," Tom told Margaret, was to see the great green spaces in the midst of a wonderful city, and the chestnuts which in another month would be in bloom in Hyde Park, and the Round Pond and the Serpentine. "But as, after all," he went on, "you probably have trees and ponds at Chidhurst, we'll begin by going to St. Paul's. I'm afraid, seeing the limited time at our disposal, that the Tower and the Monument must be left alone." A brilliant thought struck him as they were driving back down the Strand to the Houses of Parliament. "We'll take Miss Hunstan a stack of flowers from Covent Garden—you must see Covent Garden, you know. Hi! cabby, turn up here—Covent Garden; we want to get some flowers."

"Oh, but I've brought no money with me."

"I have—heaps," he laughed, delighted at her innocence. "I had an idea we might do something, you know. Now then, here we are. You must jump out, if you don't mind."

They walked up and down the centre arcade, looking in at the shops, as happy and as guileless as Adam and Eve in the first garden when the world was all their own. They chose a stack of flowers, as Tom called it; he filled Margaret's arms with them just for the pleasure of looking at her.

"You make quite a picture loaded with them," he said. "Look here, I should like to give you some roses, too, if you will have them?" he said, almost humbly. "We get them in London, you see, before you do in the country; and I want you to take some back with you."

"I should like to take my mother some," she answered, quite unconscious, of course, of their value.

"Good! You shall take her a heap from us both—I should like to send her some, if I may. But they shall meet you at Waterloo in a box, then they'll be fresh at the last moment."

Margaret felt, as they drove on again, as if she had found a playfellow, a comrade, some one who made life a wholly different thing. She had never been on equal terms with any one young before—with any one at all who laughed and chattered and looked at the world from the same stand-point as she felt that she and Tom did, though till yesterday she had not set eyes on him. It was a new delight that the world had suddenly sprung upon her. This was what it was like to be a boy and girl together, to have a brother, to have friends, what it would be like if some day in the future she were married: people went about then laughing and talking and delighting in being together. Oh, that wonderful word together!

"We won't go to the Abbey," Tom said, "because you did that yesterday, and before we inspect the House of Commons—"

"Some day you will be there!"

"Some day I shall be there," he echoed; "but before I show you the identical seat in which it is my ambition to sit, we'll get rid of these flowers. Great College Street is here, just round the corner. I wonder if she's at home. Jolly little street, isn't it? with its low houses on one side and the old wall on the other."

"And the trees looking over—"

"Here we are."

He flew out and knocked at the door. It was opened by a gray-haired woman, middle-aged, and with a kindly face, overmuch wrinkled for her years. Miss Hunstan had gone to rehearsal, she said.

"Oh—what a bore!" Tom was crestfallen. Then a happy thought struck him. "Look here, Mrs. Gilman, we have brought her some flowers. Will you let us come and stuff them into her pots?"

"To be sure," she answered. "I'll get you some water at once," and she made off, leaving the street door open.

"Come in," he cried to Margaret. "Mrs. Gilman knows me, and she'll let us arrange them." The hall of the little old-fashioned house was panelled like Mrs. Lakeman's, but it was very narrow and painted white, and there were no fripperies about. Miss Hunstan's sitting-room was on the ground floor; it was small, and the walls matched the panelling outside it. The two windows went up high and let in the light, and the bygone centuries from over the way. In front of them were muslin curtains, fresh and white, with frills to their edges. There were brass sconces in the wall with candles and blue silk shades, but the reading-lamp on the table suggested that they were seldom used. On one side of the fireplace was a writing-table covered with papers, and over it a bookshelf; here and there a photograph, above the mantelpiece an autotype of the Sistine Madonna in a dark brown frame, and beneath it, filled with white flowers, was a vase of cheap green pottery; there were other pots of the same ware about the room, but they were all empty.

"We will fill them," Tom said, triumphantly.

Margaret looked at their handiwork with delight. "I like doing this," she said. "But it seems such an odd thing to be here in a stranger's room among the things that help to make up a life—and the stranger absent."

He looked at her for a moment. "Somehow she isn't a stranger," he answered. "Lots of people are strangers, no matter how long you know 'em, but she isn't, even at the beginning, if she likes you. Let's put these daffodils into this thing. Shall we?"

"They look as if they were growing out of the green earth," she said; "pots should always be green, don't you think so? or else clear glass, like water."

"Good," he said, and went on cramming the flowers in. At last there were only the pale white roses left.

"We'll put them here," Margaret said, and set down the pot by the photograph of a thin, sweet-looking woman on the left of the writing-table.

"That's her mother," Tom said, half tenderly; Margaret pushed the roses nearer to it, and loved him for his tone. Then when all the flowers were placed about the little blue and white room, and the freshness of spring was its own, they laughed again like the light-hearted children they were, and went out to their cab.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Gilman," Tom cried, as he closed the doors. "Tell Miss Hunstan we did it—Miss Vincent and I, and that we left her our blessing."

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