CHAPTER V.
Close on eight that same evening, Timmy Tosswill stood by the open centre window of the long drawing-room, hands duly washed, and his generally short, rough, untidy hair well brushed, whistling softly to himself.
He was longing intensely for his godfather's arrival, and it seemed such a long time off to Friday.

A photograph of Radmore, in uniform, sent him at his own request two years ago, was the boy's most precious personal possession.

Timmy was a careful, almost uncannily thrifty child, with quite a lot of money in the Savings Bank, but he had taken out 10/- in order to buy a frame for the photograph, and it rested, alone in its glory, on the top of the chest of drawers that stood opposite his bed.
There had been a time when Timmy had hoped that he would grow up to look like his godfather, but now he was aware that this hope would never be fulfilled, for Radmore, in this photograph, at any rate, had a strongly-featured, handsome face, very unlike what his mother had once called "Timmy's wizened little phiz." It seemed strange to care for a person you had never seen since you were a tiny child--but there it was! To Timmy everything that touched his godfather was of far greater moment than he would have admitted to anyone.

Radmore was his secret hero; and now, to-night, he asked himself painfully, why had his hero left off loving Betty?
The story he had overheard this afternoon had deeply impressed him.

For the first time he began to dimly apprehend the strange and piteous tangle we call life.
Suddenly there broke on the still autumn air the distant sound of sharp barks and piteous whines.