Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/123

Rh son lessons in piano-tuning? In the widow's eyes Mr. Knowler's pockets figuratively bulged with the sum of her small savings, a sum it had taken her well-nigh as many years to amass as it represented actual coin of the realm.

"He hasn't been to his work?" she queried evasively, as her eyes dwelt on Mr. Josiah's profile and on the meagre cheek made ruddy by the curious little red veins which spread, fibre-like, over the averted cheek-bone.

"Your son," said Mr. Josiah, turning to her and replacing his pocket-handkerchief with a superfluous flourish, "your son, Mrs. Reinhart, has attended on two occasions or, to be absolutely correct, on three occasions only during the last seven weeks."

The woman's voice faltered as she answered:

"Then you've not been paying 'im, sir?"

"Apprentices are paid at the end of their week's work — their full week's work," Mr. Knowler reminded her.

"He was to have four-and-six given 'im the first year, five-and-six the second"

"For work done, Mrs. Reinhart, for work done."

Mr. Knowler had been fussily replacing a stray paper in his desk at the moment of speaking, and the sharp snap with which the little gentleman reclosed the lid made the reply seem, in a sense, final and unanswerable to Mrs. Reinhart.

In the vague labyrinth of her mind she dimly felt the logic or the master's attitude, while she at the same time cast about for some solution of the inexplicable problem presented by a new presentation of facts. A suspicion which she as yet dared not put into words forced itself upon her. Surely the thing she feared most in all the world could not be true? Yet there was the sovereign missed from the mantelpiece; the gold brooch — given her by her poor dead husband on their wedding-day — which she Rh