oman in a pale blue sunbonnet.

"Oh, Arthur Miles, it's just splendid!" she announced, waving a letter
in her hand. And with that, noting the boy's attitude, she checked
herself and stared suspiciously from him to the artist. "Wot yer doin'
to 'im?" she demanded.

"Painting his portrait."

"Then you didn't ought, an' 'e'd no business to allow it!"

She stepped to the canvas, examined it quickly, anxiously, then with a
puzzled frown that seemed to relax in a sigh of relief--

"Well, it don't seem as you've done much 'arm as yet. But all the same,
you didn't ought."

"I want to know what's splendid?" the artist inquired, looking from her
to the girl in the sun-bonnet, who blushed rosily.

Tilda, for her part, looked at Arthur Miles and to him addressed her
answer--

"'Enery's broke it off!"

"Oh!" said the boy. He reflected a moment, and added with a bright
smile, "And what about Sam?"

"It's all 'ere"--she held out the letter; "an' we got to take it to 'im.
'Enery says that waitin's a weary business, but 'e leaves it to 'er;
on'y 'e's just found out there's insanity on _'is_ side o' the family.
That's a bit 'ard on Sam, o' course; but 'Enery doesn' know about Sam's
feelin's. 'E was just tryin' to be tactful."

"You'll pardon my curiosity," put in young Mr. Jessup; "but I don't seem
to get the hang of this. So far as I figure it up, you two children
jump out of nowhere and find yourselves here for the first time in your
lives; and before I can paint one of you--and I'm no snail--the other
walks into a public-house, freezes on to an absolute stranger, bustles
her through one matrimonial affair and has pretty well fixed her with
another. As a student of locomotion"--he turned and stared down upon
Tilda--"I'd like you to tell me how you did it."

"Well," she answered, "I felt a bit nervous at startin'. So I walked
straight in an' ordered two-penn'orth o' beer--an' then it all came
out."

"Was that so?" He perpended this, and went on, "I remember reading
somewhere in Ruskin that the more a man can do his job the more he can't
say how. It's rough on learners."

But Tilda was not to be drawn into a disputation on Art.

"Come along," she called to the boy.

"You mean to take him from me in this hurry? . . . Well, that breaks
another record. I never up to now lost a model before I'd weakened on
him: it's not their way."

"That young man," said Tilda as, holding Arthur Miles by the hand, she
drew