e.

On the way back she hurried into the company-room, up to the Lady.
"I've done it!" she reported, breathlessly. "I hope it was
polite--oh, I hope he will!"

[Illustration: Elizabeth]

The Child's father ate his lunch silently and a little hastily, as if
to get it over. On the opposite side of the table the Child's mother
ate hers silently and a little hastily. It was the usual way of their
meals. The few casual things they said had to do with the weather or
the salad. Then it was over and they separated, each to his own side
of the divided house.

The father took up his pen to write--it seemed all there was left to
do now. But the tiny folded note arrested his hand, and he stared in
amazement. The Child had inadvertently set her seal upon it in the
form of a little finger-print. So he knew it was hers. The first
shock of hope it had awakened subsided into mere curiosity. But when
he opened it, when he read it--

He sat a long time very still indeed--so still he could hear the
rustle of manuscript pages in the other writing-room across the hall.
Perhaps he sat there nearly all the afternoon, for the shadows
lengthened before he seemed to move.

In the rush of thoughts that came to him two stood out most
clearly--the memory of an awful day, when he had seemed to die a
thousand deaths, and only come to life when a white-capped nurse came
smiling to him and said, "It is a little girl," and the memory of a
day two years ago, when a man and a woman had faced each other and
said, "We will try to bear it for the child."

The Child found her answer lying on her plate at nursery tea. Marie,
who was bustling about the room getting things orderly for the night,
heard a little gasp and turned in alarm. The Child was spelling out
her letter with a radiant face that belied the gasp. There was
something in the lonely little figure's eagerness that appealed even
to the unemotional maid, and for a moment there was likelihood of a
strange thing happening. But the crisis was quickly over, and Marie,
with the kiss unkissed on her lips, went on with her work. Emotions
were rare with Marie.

"'Dear Little Girl, Who Is You,'" spelled the Child, in a soft
ecstasy, yet not without dread of what might come, supposing he
thought she had been impo--

"'Dear Little Girl, Who Is You,'" she hurriedly began again, "'your
farther will be happy to accept your kind invitation for 1/2
past 7 this evening. Will you please call for him, as he