tone-up for tiny tots, Ada
Lane's pills for the poppets, and above and before all, from Professor
Jeremiah T. Iplock's 'What baby wants' at two-and-sixpence the bottle,
or in tabloid form for the growing child, two-and-eight the box. Keep
his inside clear of all such, and you'll be thankful, and he'll bless
you both on his bended knees when he comes to know his preservation."

"He'll never have them, Mr. Thrush," said Rosamund, with a sober voice
and twinkling eyes. "Never."

"Bless you, ma'am, for those beautiful words. And now really I must be
going."

"You'll find tea in the housekeeper's room, Mr. Thrush, as usual," said
Rosamund.

"And very kind of you to have it there, I'm sure, ma'am!" the old
gentleman gallantly replied as he made his wavering adieux.

At the door he turned round to face the nursery once more, lifted one
hand in a manner almost apostolic, and uttered the final warning "_Never
cosset!_" Then he evaporated, not without a sort of mossy dignity, and
might be heard tremblingly descending to the lower regions.

"Rose, since when do we have a housekeeper's room?" asked Dion, touching
Robin's puckers with a gentle fore-finger.

"I can't call it the servants' hall to him, poor old man. And I like to
give him tea. It may wean him from----" An expressive look closed the
sentence.

That night, at last, Dion drew from her an explanation of her Thrush
cult. On the evening when Mr. Thrush had rescued her in the fog, as they
walked slowly to Great Cumberland Place, he had told her something of
his history. Rosamund had a great art in drawing from people the story
of their troubles when she cared to do so. Her genial and warm-hearted
sympathy was an almost irresistible lure. Mr. Thrush's present fate
had been brought about by a tragic circumstance, the death of his only
child, a girl of twelve, who had been run over by an omnibus in Oxford
Circus and killed on the spot. Left alone with a peevish, nagging wife
who had never suited him, or, as he expressed it, "studied" him in any
way, he had gone down the hill till he had landed near the bottom. All
his love had been fastened on his child, and sorrow had not strengthened
but had embittered him.

"But to me he seems a gentle old thing," Dion said, when Rosamund told
him this.

"He's very bitter inside, poor old chap, but he looks upon us as
friends. He's taken sorrow the wrong way. That's how it is. I'm trying
to get him to look at things differently