“I expect he would do things for you—all the same, when you go to Heaven, if God goes away for a few days—and other times too?”
“Who, Pillar?”
“Yes.”
“I expect he would.”
“He says you can’t do without him, so he’d have to.”
“Does he say that?” asked Marcus, feeling a glow of absurd thankfulness permeating his being—
Shan’t nodded and said fervently that she liked Pillar. Marcus had to assure her that he did, too, and there the matter ended—so far as Shan’t was concerned; but not for Marcus. He wasn’t superstitious, but he wished Shan’t hadn’t broached the subject of giving Pillar up to any one. Existence without Pillar would be an impossibility. That afternoon by letter Marcus raised the wages of Pillar five pounds a year, and after listening to Shan’t’s prayers asking God to bless Pillar, he wished he had made it ten pounds. It was disturbing. Life generally was disturbing. An elderly woman in a bath-chair saw that it was so, or guessed it rather than saw it. She was an adept at guessing things. She had seen Marcus meet and walk away with the girl with big brown eyes, which held tragedy in their depths. She could see by the cut of Marcus’s clothes, by his shoes, all she wanted to know of his circumstances in life. She guessed him to be a bachelor and defenceless, because bored. This was not entirely astuteness on her part; she had heard Shan’t call him “Uncle,” and it is only a bachelor uncle who would take a small niece away with him, knowing nothing of the dangers of so doing, and the difficulties. No married man would attempt to do what it takes at least two women to do properly—judging by the babies on the shore and their attendants.
So the next time Marcus passed the elderly woman in her bath-chair, she smiled at him. Not as the other woman had smiled, hoping to attract him, but knowing she would. He was attracted. He liked elderly women as many bachelors do. They find in them a safe outlet.
“Come and talk to me,” said this one, and Marcus felt delighted to do so. “What have you done with your little girl?” she asked.
Marcus said he had left her on the sands—with—