ogether."

"Oh, I don't know," rather absently; "you will be too much taken up
with your new friends to want an old stager like me."

"You are wrong there," returned the lad eagerly. "I should be glad to
have your opinion of"--he hesitated, and then finished lamely, "of the
Jacobis, I mean. You are such a judge of character, and all that sort
of thing."

"Am I?" with a smile; but they had no time to say more, as the London
train was signalled.

An hour and a half later Malcolm was in his chambers in Lincoln's Inn,
opening his letters and dashing off replies, to be posted in due time
by the obsequious Malachi. Malcolm found so much to occupy him that he
decided not to go to Queen's Gate until the following evening, and sent
Anna a line to that effect. He felt a quiet evening at Cheyne Walk
would be more in harmony with his feelings.

As he crossed the broad space at the foot of the steps in Lincoln's
Inn, he overtook Caleb Martin wheeling the perambulator. Kit had her
new doll hugged in her thin little arms.

"Oh, dad, do stop," she exclaimed eagerly; "it is the gentleman what
gave me my baby;" and then Malcolm stepped up to the perambulator.

"Kit has been looking out for you the last week, sir," observed Caleb
in his humble, flurried way. "She won't even take notice of the
pigeons; her heart is so set on thanking you for the doll. It is my
belief that she thinks it is alive the way she goes on with it."

"My baby's asleep--should you like to see her open her eyes?" asked Kit
with maternal pride. "She has blue eyes, she has, like dad's and
mine--only prettier. She is just the beautifullest thing I ever saw,
ain't she, dad? and Ma'am says she must have cost a lot."

Malcolm smiled, but there was a pitiful look in his eyes. Even in these
few days Kit's face had grown thinner and more pinched, and the shrill
voice was weaker. There was no longer a stiff halo of curls under the
sun-bonnet; they hung in limp wisps about her face.

"Has the child been ill?" he asked, and then Caleb looked at him in a
dazed, nervous fashion.

"Not to call ill, sir, but just a bit piny and dwiny from the heat. Our
place is like the Black Hole of Calcutta for stuffiness. She is that
languid and fretty that we can't get her to eat, so my wife made me
take her out for an airing."

Malcolm pondered for a moment. Then a sudden inspiration came to him.
There was a fruiterer in the Strand, and he was just thinking of
carrying a basket o