“Uncle,” Nettie chidingly answered.

“Pray, do tell me,” said Lenox.

They had moved by now to a small breakfast nook, which just managed to fit three (though it would have been perfect for two), and she put eggs on his plate.

“I was once very late in running my errands,” she said, “so late I feared I would miss supper.”

“Miss supper,” Crook echoed softly, gazing with pure love up at his niece.

“I’m generally inside at that hour, of course, but I happened to be in such a rush that I stumbled-and as I stood up saw the clock hanging just between two houses. It was so beautiful, Mr. Lenox, you could scarcely credit! Well, the next evening I went out and drew a few sketches of it-art is a hobby of mine-and then completed the work you see.”

Now, as stories go, Lenox acknowledged to himself, this wasn’t much of one. Yet through it all Crook looked as enthralled as Thucydides listening to Herodotus in the town square.

“My brother, Nettie’s father, was a fine chap,” said Crook, “but died fighting the Russians.”

“In the Crimea?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. That would have been 1855, eleven years since. I took her in as a teenager, and she has been my sunshine ever since.”

“Uncle,” said Nettie again in an undertone. “My mother died in childbirth, Mr. Lenox.”

“I’m terribly sorry to hear it.”

“It was a shame,” Crook said. The bell chimed behind him. “Blimey-already? All right, dear, give us a kiss.”

This received, he took a great ring of keys from his wallet and left with a scant word of good-bye, already, perhaps, the grim and reliable publican that Stirrington knew.

Lenox was finishing his food when the young girl came in. “Pardon,” she said, “but there’s a visitor at the inn, sir.”

“Who is it, Lucy?” asked Nettie.

“I’ve never seen him, ma’am. A gentleman. I’m afraid he’s-” Here she stopped.