knows her, Joe--" He looked at the young man consideringly.

Chandler shook his head impatiently. "I knows her quite as well as
I wants to know her," he said. "I made up my mind the very first
time I see'd her, Mr. Bunting."

"No! Did you really?" said Bunting. "Well, come to think of it,
I did so with her mother; aye, and years after, with Ellen, too.
But I hope you'll never want no second, Chandler."

"God forbid!" said the young man under his breath. And then he
asked, rather longingly, "D'you think they'll be out long now, Mr.
Bunting?"

And Bunting woke up to a due sense of hospitality. "Sit down, sit
down; do!" he said hastily. "I don't believe they'll be very long.
They've only got a little bit of shopping to do."

And then, in a changed, in a ringing, nervous tone, he asked, "And
how about your job, Joe? Nothing new, I take it? I suppose you're
all just waiting for the next time?"

"Aye--that's about the figure of it." Chandler's voice had also
changed; it was now sombre, menacing. "We're fair tired of it--
beginning to wonder when it'll end, that we are!"

"Do you ever try and make to yourself a picture of what the master's
like?" asked Bunting. Somehow, he felt he must ask that.

"Yes," said Joe slowly. "I've a sort of notion--a savage,