r papa always live alone? Have you not an
uncle?" enquired Graham, remembering the Belgian's speech
about the brother-in-law.

"Oh! yes, there is Uncle Charles--he comes with us generally;
but sometimes he goes away, and then I am so glad."

"How is that? are you not fond of him?"

"No," said Madelon, "I don't like him at all; he is very
disagreeable, and teases me. And he is always wanting me to go
away; he says, 'Adolphe'--that is papa, you know--'when is that
child going to school?' But papa pays no attention to him, for
he is never going to send me away; he told me so, and he says
he could not get on without me at all."

Graham no longer wondered at Madelon's choice of a game, for
it appeared she was in the habit of accompanying her father
every evening to the gambling tables, when they were at any of
the watering-places he frequented.

"Sometimes we go away into the ball-room and dance," she said,
"that is when papa is losing; he says, 'Madelon, _mon enfant_, I
see we shall do nothing here to-night, let us go and dance.'
But sometimes he does nothing but win, and then we stop till
the table closes, and he makes a great deal of money. Do you
ever make money in that way, Monsieur?" she added naively.

"Indeed I do not," replied Graham.

"It is true that everyone has not the same way," said the
child, with an air of being well informed, and evidently
regarding her father's way as a profession like another, only
superior to most. "What do you do, Monsieur?"

"I am going to be a doctor, Madelon."

"A doctor," she said reflecting; "I do not think that can be a
good way. I only know one doctor, who cured me when I was ill
last winter; but I know a great many gentlemen who make money
like papa. Can you make a fortune with ten francs, Monsieur?"

"I don't think I ever tried," answered Horace.

"Ah, well, papa can; I have often heard him say, 'Give me only
ten francs, _et je ferai fortune!_' "

There was something at once so droll and so sad about this
child, with her precocious knowledge and ignorant simplicity,
that the lad's honest tender heart was touched with a sudden
pity as he listened to her artless chatter. He was almost glad
when her confidences drifted away to more childlike subjects
of interest, and she told him about her toys, and books, and
pictures, and songs; she could sing a great many songs, she
said, but Horace could not persuade her to let him hear one.

"Why do you talk French?" she sa