Do you know, I fancy she's grown up rather good-looking, Jem ?" "You are observant," said Mr.Hardy, admiringly.
"Of course, it may be my partiality," said Mr.Nugent, with judicial fairness.

"I was always a bit fond of Kate.

I don't suppose anybody else would see anything in her.

Where are you living now ?" "Fort Road," said Hardy; "come round any evening you can, if you won't come now." Nugent promised, and, catching sight of Miss Kybird standing in the doorway of the shop, bade him good-bye and crossed the road.

It was becoming quite a regular thing for her to wait and have her tea with him now, an arrangement which was provocative of many sly remarks on the part of Mrs.Kybird.
[Illustration: "Miss Kybird standing in the doorway of the shop."] "Thought you were never coming," said Miss Kybird, tartly, as she led the way to the back room and took her seat at the untidy tea-tray.
"And you've been crying your eyes out, I suppose," remarked Mr.Nugent, as he groped in the depths of a tall jar for black-currant jam.