Her cheeks flushed with surprise. "Clerk to Greatorex and Greatorex! I thought you went to Port Natal to make your fortune."
"But I did not make it. It has been nothing but knocking about; then and since. Carrick is a trump, as he always was, but he gets floored himself sometimes; and that's his case now. If they had not given me a stool here (which he got for me) I'm not sure but I should have gone into the hot-pie line."
"The--what?"
"The hot-pie line; crying them in the streets, you know, with a basket and a white cloth, and a paper cap on. There's a fine opening for it down in Poplar."
Miss Channing burst out laughing.
"It would be nothing to a fellow who has been over yonder," avowed Roland, jerking his head in the direction Port Natal might be supposed to lie. And then leaping to a widely different subject in his volatile lightness, he said something that brought the tears to her eyes, the drooping tremor to her lips.
"It was so good in the old days; all of us children together; we were no better. And Mr. Channing is gone, I hear! Oh, I am so sorry, Annabel!"
"Two years last February," she said in a hushed tone. "We have just put off our mourning for him. Mamma is in the dear old house, and Arthur and Tom live with her. Will you please look for the little girl, Mr. Yorke?"
"Now I vow!"--burst forth Roland in a heat. "I'll not stand that, you know. One would think you had put on stilts. If ever you call me 'Mr. Yorke' again, I'll go back to Port Natal."
She laughed a little pleasant laugh of embarrassment. "But, please, I want my pupil. I cannot go myself into the offices to look for her."