Lennox.

At five o'clock Mrs. Ede came up to say she was going up the town to do a little marketing for Sunday, and to ask Kate to come down to the front kitchen, where she could be in sight of the shop. Miss Hender said nothing could have happened more fortunately, and, with many instructions as to where they should meet, she hurried away. But she was no sooner gone than Kate remembered she had no one to leave in charge of the shop. She should have asked one of the apprentices, but she hadn't, and would have to turn the key in the door and leave her mother-in-law to come in by the side way. Ralph would open to her; it couldn't be helped. Mr. Lennox was going away to-morrow; she must see him.

At that moment her mantle caused her some uneasiness; it didn't seem to hang well, and it was impossible to go to the theatre in the gloves that had been lying in her pocket for the last month. She took a pair of grey thread from the window, but while pulling them on her face changed expression. Was it Ralph coming down the staircase? There was nobody else in the house. Trembling, she waited for him to appear. Wheezing loudly, her husband dragged himself through the doorway.

'What—do you look so fri-frightened at? You did-didn't expect to see me, did you?'

'No, I didn't,' Kate answered as if in a dream.

'Feeling a good deal better, I thou-ght I would come down, but—but the stairs—have tried me.'

It was some time before he could speak again. At last he said:

'Where are you going?'

'I was just going for a walk.'

'I don't know how it is, but it seems to me that you're always out now; always coming in or going out; never in the shop. If it wasn't for my asthma I don't think I'd ever be out of the shop, but women think of nothing but pleasure and—,' a very rude word which she had never heard Ralph use before. But it might be that she was mistaken. Poor man! it was distressing to watch him gasping for breath. He leaned against the counter, and Kate begged him to let her help him upstairs, but he shook her off testily, saying that he understood himself better than anybody else did, and that he would look after the shop.

'You're going out? Well, go,' and she hurried away, hoping that a customer would come in, for his great delight was the shop. 'Attending on half a dozen customers will amuse him more than the play will amuse me,' she said to herself, and a smile rose to her lips, for she imagined him taking advantage of her absence to rearrange the window. 'But what can have brought him down?' Kate asked herself. 'Ah! that's it,' she said, for it had suddenly come into her mind that ever since she had told him of a certain sale of aprons and some unexpected orders for baby clothes he had often mentioned that the worst part of these asthmatic attacks was that they prevented his attendance in the shop. 'The shop is his pleasure just as the theatre is Hender's,' Kate said as she hurried up Piccadilly to the theatre, her heart in her mouth, for her time was up. Fearing to miss Hender, she raced along, dodging the passengers with quick turns and twists. 'It's my only chance of seeing him; he's going away tomorrow,' and she was living so intensely in her own imagination that she neither saw nor heeded anybody until she suddenly heard somebody calling after her, 'Kate! Kate! Kate!' She turned round and faced her mother-in-law.

'Where on earth are you going at that rate?' said Mrs. Ede, who carried a small basket on her arm.

'Only for a walk,' Kate replied in a voice dry with enforced calmness.

'Oh, for a walk; I'm glad of that, it will do you good. But which way are you going?'

'Any where round about the town. Up on the hill, St. John's Road.'

'How curious! I was just thinking of going back that way. There's a fruiterer's shop where you can get potatoes a penny a stone cheaper than you can here.'

If a thunderbolt had ruined Hanley before her eyes at that moment, it would not have appeared to her of such importance as this theft of her evening's pleasure. It was with difficulty that she saved herself from saying straight out that she was going to the theatre to see Mr. Lennox, and had a right to do so if she pleased.

'But I like walking fast,' she said; 'perhaps I walk too fast for you?'

'Oh no, not at all. My old legs are as good as your young ones.