Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/194

186 and subdued child, and Angel's untiring efforts to make him laugh were fruitless; she could only now and again draw a grave smile from him. At the sight of lunch his face filled with an anguished eagerness very painful to see. However, he ate nicely, and did not wolf his food, as he might very well have done. He did enjoy it; Angel had ransacked Spiers and Pond for dainties likely to tempt a child's palate. At lunch he absorbed every one's interest; his father and mother could not keep their eyes off him; and I saw that they were very anxious eyes. Angel had neither eyes nor ears for any one else, and I began to think that I must really find some children to play with her. After lunch she brought out of her room a large red wooden engine, and he played with it in a hushed delight.

As we had arranged, Angel then took away Mrs. Jubb to her room for a talk; and I made the needful inquiries about the habits of the wicked stepmother. Mannaduke told me that she lived at Hardstone Manor in Hampshire, once the country seat of the Scroome family, bought by his father some twenty years ago. Save for her servants, whom she bullied, she enjoyed no human intercourse, for she had been at the pains of quarrelling with all her neighbors, the rector, the doctor, the Anglo-Indians and the small gentry. She had no relations, or she had quarrelled with them