waiting their turn. It was marvelous, the success of Emma. Dishes clattered, orders were shouted, the cash-register clanked and banged unceasingly. She was proud of the place and happy there: it was clear that she could not imagine living away from such a hubbub and din.
While they were eating the stewed dried corn which she gave her customers in place of the usual insipid canned variety, she asked, "What did you do this morning, Philip?"
"I went for a walk."
"Where?"
"In the Flats."
"You might have chosen a handsomer part of the Town. You might have gone out to see the new Park."
He didn't tell her about the locomotives. Once he had kept it a secret because she would have forbidden him to return to them. Now, he kept his secret for some other reason: he did not know quite what it was. He only knew that Emma and Naomi must not know of it. It would only make them believe that he was completely crazy.
Presently, when they had reached the squash pie, he asked, "What's become of Mary Watts?" And at the same moment he felt himself blushing horribly, for in some way the memory of the imprisonment in the storeroom returned to claim him unawares, and make him feel a shameful little boy unable to look his mother in the eye. Only he understood now: he knew what lay beneath the ancient, veiled accusations. . . .
"Oh, she's had a sad time," said Emma. "You know she married the superintendent of the Mills—John Conyngham—a man fifteen years older than she was,
