of the packing case. It failed, however, to get beyond the door of the lumber room.
"That girl of Abe's" ruminated the old man deep in straw. In the stress of affairs, he had almost forgotten that the only child of a half brother many years his junior, was coming to London by the morning train.
"Uncle Si!"
With a hiss of disgust worthy of an elderly cobra he writhed his head free of the straw. "Confound her, turning up like this. Why couldn't she come this afternoon when the boy'd be home? But that's a woman. They're born as cross as Christmas."
A third time his name was called.
S. Gedge Antiques, unshaven, beslippered, bespectacled, slowly emerged from the decent obscurity of the back premises into the fierce publicity of the front shop. He was greeted by a sight of which his every instinct profoundly disapproved.
The sight was youthful, smiling, fresh complexioned. In a weak moment, for which mentally he had been kicking himself round the shop ever since, he had been so unwise as to offer to adopt this girl who had lost her father some years ago and had lately buried her mother. Carter Paterson had delivered her trunk along with the packing case from Ipswich, a fact he now recalled.
Had S. Gedge had an eye for anything but antiques, he must have seen at once that his niece was by way of being a decidedly attractive young woman. She was nineteen, and she wore a neat well-fitting black dress and a plain black hat in which cunning and good taste were mingled. Inclined to be tall she was slender and straight and carried herself well. Her eyes were
