“JEM, you had better go to bed, and you too, Jack. It’s very late, and I don’t suppose father will be home before twelve. A quarter past eleven! That’s too late for all of you.”

It was Mrs. Kayll who spoke, looking first at the clock and then round at her sleepy children. Madge was nodding, Bob stifling a yawn, and Jack and Jem both appeared much too wide-awake to be natural.

Jem made a grimace.

“Oh, no, do let us stay and hear all about it,” he said in imploring tones.

Jack, however, rose at once.

“All right, mother; good-night.” And he went straight upstairs in the dark, for candles by which to see to undress were a luxury not indulged in by the Kayll children.

“It’s all very well for Jack to go, you know, mother,” said Jem, who was not inclined to yield without an argument, “because he has to be up early and off to work; but I haven’t, until I get something else to do, so I may just as well sit up and keep you company. Send Bob and Madge instead.”

Mrs. Kayll looked up with a slight smile.

“I don’t want any company, thank you,” she told him. “I get quite as much as I need—rather too much, sometimes. And I don’t think it’s good for you to be up till twelve, dear.”

“It won’t hurt me for once,” said the boy quickly.

“Why can’t you go to bed when mother tells you?” muttered Bob, who was preparing to go himself. “What’s the good of bothering her and making such a fuss?”

Jem fired up angrily.

“You be quiet, Bob. Nobody spoke to you. I may stay, mayn’t I, mother?”

“No, no, no,” repeated Mrs. Kayll firmly, shaking her head. “Go to bed, all of you, and get a good rest, ready for the work of to-morrow. Father will be tired, and I’m sure he’d a great deal rather find you all gone and the house quiet. Do go, there’s good children.”

Madge folded up her work, kissed her, and went. Bob followed her example; but still Jem lingered, sitting so silent that his mother thought he had gone, and sewed on industriously until some slight sound he made caused her to start and look up.

“Dear me, Jem! What has come over you? You heard what I said a few minutes ago.”

“I didn’t suppose you’d really mind, mother. Besides, I want to tell father about leaving Mr. Graves’s, and to ask him what I’d better do next.”

“Jem! How thoughtless you are, to be sure! Now, do you think, when father comes in tired, as he certainly will be, between twelve and one at night, he will want to be worried by your affairs? There, no more, Jem. Go along at once.”

Very slowly and reluctantly, and wearing a sulky expression which meant that he thought himself ill-used, Jem departed, though all the time he was so sleepy he had hardly been able to hold his eyes open for a quarter of an hour past.

Edith and Bessie were sleeping soundly when Madge went up. She stood for a few minutes looking at them, as they lay side by side, for there was enough moonlight to show their faces quite plainly to eyes that had grown accustomed to the darkness.

“How pretty they are like that!” thought Madge, with an elder sister’s affection. “What dear little things they are too, in spite of their faults, when one comes to think about it!”

Then she undressed, said her prayers, and crept in beside Bessie, so weary after seventeen hours of hard toil that almost as soon as her head touched the pillow she was in a dreamless sleep.

Before long the whole house was wrapped in a peaceful stillness, as one after another of its occupants lay down and forgot all fatigues, anxieties, longings for money, aches and pains, in pleasant visions or calm unconsciousness.And the poor mother down-stairs? She drew the lamp nearer, now that there was no one else to share its light, and stitched away at her mending, the click of her needle on the thimble being almost as regular as the “tick-tack” of the little clock on the mantelpiece.

Ungrateful little clock that it was! It had always been treated well and kindly, and wound up every night, in spite of its not telling the exact truth, and now Mr. Kayll had just cleaned it, oiled its works, and set it going again; yet, such is the ingratitude of clocks, it set itself to work to make poor Mrs. Kayll uncomfortable, by compelling her to notice how fast the time was going. It would not even strike twelve quietly, but gave a warning growl first, to attract her attention, and then hammered out twelve distinct “tings,” that sounded twice as loud as usual.

“He must be here soon,” said Mrs. Kayll, taking a fresh needleful of cotton, and trying to go on with her work; but somehow or other the needle would not go in at the right place, and Mrs. Kayll’s head drooped forward slowly more and more, until her chin rested upon her breast.

She, too, was asleep. The clock at once seized this opportunity, and rushed on as fast as it could go, the big hand hurrying round its face and the little one creeping steadily after. Half-past twelve. She did not move. The hands hurried on, and suddenly the tired mother started awake, roused by a loud warning sound, in time to hear it strike “One.”

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet, rubbing her eyes and staring hard at the clock, before she could believe. “One! How late he is! I must have been nodding.”

She walked up and down the room a few times, to wake herself more thoroughly; and then again tried to go on with her work, thinking meanwhile of the little girl and her sad story.

“They are keeping him long,” she said to herself; “but there’s no saying how much worse he may have found matters than he expected. Possibly they are in such great trouble that he cannot bring himself to leave them. Poor Robert! How worn out he will be!”

Stitch, stitch. And then the drowsiness came back, and the clock made haste, and succeeded in striking two without waking her. She awoke, though, at a quarter past the hour, put away her work, and walked to the door to stand looking out into the street.

It is very painful to wait and wait for someone you expect, who does not come. At first you are surprised, then astonished, then you begin to be anxious, after which, if the expected person is one for whom you care much, you become seriously frightened, and imagine every terrible thing that could possibly have come to pass.

So it was with Mrs. Kayll. At three o’clock she fancied her husband must have been run over, or have met with some other accident, and before long she determined to wait no longer, but to go out and look for him.

She went upstairs, the first thing, bent over the bed where Madge was sleeping, and gently shook her by the arm. The girl opened her eyes in an instant.

“Hush, Madge! Don’t wake the others, pray.”

Madge sat upright, staring at her mother with a bewildered expression.

“Do you hear me, child? Are you awake?”

“Yes, mother. What’s the matter?”

“Father hasn’t come home!”

Madge stared at her still, evidently not quite understanding.

“Why—what time is it?” she whispered.

“A quarter past three or more.”

“Oh, mother!”

“I want you to dress quickly and come down, so that you could open the door if I should miss him, and then I’m going to look for him,” Mrs. Kayll said hurriedly, but without raising her voice above a whisper, so that the others slept on undisturbed.

Madge stepped out on to the floor and began to put on her clothes.

“I don’t think you need be so frightened, mother dear,” she said. “So many things might have kept him. Perhaps the baby that the little girl said was so ill, was worse, and father thought it would be cruel to come away. Or the mother may be worse, so that he could not leave the children. Or perhaps there may be a fire somewhere, and father is stopping to see it. You know how fond father is of looking at fires.”

These solutions of the puzzle had already occurred to Mrs. Kayll, but yet they seemed more possible when suggested by someone else.

“Well, dear, it can’t do any harm for me to go and see. The worst that can happen is that your father may laugh at me for being so anxious about nothing. Come down as soon as you’re ready.”

And, thinking it safer, not to talk there any longer, she went and put on bonnet and shawl, and again took up her position at the front door.

In a few minutes Madge was at her side.

“What are you going to do first, mother?”

“I am going to find the address Amy Coleson gave us—Wingate Row—to see if he is there, and, if not, whether he has been there, and at what time he left. If he comes home, Madge, tell him how it was, and that I am sure to be in soon.”

And with these words her mother hurried away, and the girl was left to keep lonely watch, and to stifle her fears as well as she could. Fortunately for her, Madge had not such a quick imagination as her mother.