"Oh, thank you, sir!" said Selina in a husky voice; and she dabbed at her eyes.
"It's not for you to thank me; it's for me to thank you," said Sir Tancred.
"Oh, no, sir!" said Selina quickly. "I know what gentlemen are. I've been in service in good houses. They have their sport and their pleasures; and they can't attend to things like this."
"I've been looking for him for six months—ever since I knew that I had a child," said Sir Tancred in a very bitter voice.
"Have you now, sir?" said Selina. "Ah, if I'd only known, and come to you!"
Her story had tided them over the greater part of their journey; and for the rest of it they were silent, Sir Tancred immersed in a bitter reverie, Selina sitting with a hand on each knee, bent forward, with shining eyes, breathing quickly.
Towards the end of their journey she had to direct the cabman; and past the last long row or little red-brick villas, in a waste from which the agriculturalist had retired in favour of the jerry-builder, they came to the goal, three dirty, tumble-down cottages. The cab stopped at the third cottage; Selina sat back in the seat and pulled down her veil, in case Mrs. Bostock should recognise her; Sir Tancred got down and knocked at the door. A long-drawn snore was the only answer. He hammered on the door with his cane till he heard the grating of a chair on a brick floor; the door opened, and a blowsy, red-faced woman peered at him with blinking eyes.
"You have a little boy here in your charge. I've come for him," said Sir Tancred.
The woman only blinked at him stupidly.
"I've come for the little boy," said Sir Tancred loudly.