They have no money at all, you know. The father was in some kind of importing business—monkey-nuts or something—and drank himself to death. Left them without a penny, poor things. Old Mrs. Sharpe ran a boarding-house in London to make ends meet, and the daughter was maid-of-all-work. They were just going to be turned into the street with their furniture, when the old man at The Franchise died. So providential!”

“Aunt Lin! Where do you get those stories?”

“But it’s true, dear. Perfectly true. I forget who told me—someone who had stayed in the same street in London—but it was first-hand, anyhow. I am not one to pass on idle gossip, as you know. Is it a nice house? I always wondered what was inside that iron gate.”

“No, rather ugly. But they have some nice pieces of furniture.”

“Not as well kept as ours, I’ll be bound,” she said, looking complacently at the perfect sideboard and the beautiful chairs ranged against the wall. “The vicar said yesterday that if this house were not so obviously a home it would be a show place.” Mention of the clergy seemed to remind her of something. “By the way, will you be extra patient with Christina for the next few days. I think she is going to be ‘saved’ again.”

“Oh, poor Aunt Lin, what a bore for you. But I was afraid of it. There was a ‘text’ in the saucer of my early-morning tea today. ‘Thou God seest me’ on a pink scroll, with a tasteful design of Easter lilies in the background. Is she changing her church again, then?”

“Yes. She has discovered that the Methodists are ‘whited sepulchres,’ it seems, so she is going to those ‘Bethel’ people above Benson’s bakery, and is due to be ‘saved’ any day now. She has been shouting hymns all the morning.”

“But she always does.”

“Not ‘sword of the Lord’ ones. As long as she sticks to ‘pearly crowns’ or ‘streets of gold’ I know it is all right. But once she begins on the ‘sword of the Lord’ I know that it will be my turn to do the baking presently.”

“Well, darling, you bake just as well as Christina.”

“Oh, no, she doesn’t,” said Christina, coming in with the meat course. A big soft creature with untidy straight hair and a vague eye. “Only one thing your Aunt Lin makes better than me, Mr. Robert, and that’s hot cross buns, and that’s only once a year. So there! And if I’m not appreciated in this house, I’ll go where I will be.”

“Christina, my love!” Robert said, “you know very well that no one could imagine this house without you, and if you left I should follow you to the world’s end. For your butter tarts, if for nothing else. Can we have butter tarts tomorrow, by the way?”

“Butter tarts are no food for unrepentant sinners. Besides I don’t think I have the butter.