'Do you know her?' the child asked, with disconcerting directness.

'That's just the trouble with me' Colonel Baigent confessed.

'She is my great-aunt, really. She lives in Little Swithun, right
at the back of Dean's Close; and her name is on a brass plate--a
very hard name to pronounce, "Miss Lapenotiere, Dancing and
Calisthenics"--that's another hard word, but it means things you do
with an elastic band to improve your figure. The plate doesn't
azackly tell the truth, because she has been an invalid for years
now, and Aunt Netta--that's my other aunt--had to carry on the
business. But everybody knows about it, so there really is no
deceit. Aunt Netta's name is Wallas, and so is mine. Her mother was
sister to Aunt Louisa, and she tells us we come of very good family.
She never married. I don't believe she ever wanted to marry anybody
but you, and now it's too late. But I call it splendid, your turning
up like this. And on Christmas Eve, to!'

'It's beginning to be splendid,' owned the colonel, who had partly
recovered himself. 'Unhappily--since you put it so--it is, I fear, a
fact that I never met your Aunt Louisa.'

'Oh! but you did--in the street, and once in the post office, when
you were a boy at the college.'

'Such impressions are fleeting, my dear, as you will live to prove.
Your other aunt, Miss Netta--'

'Oh! she will have been born after your time,' said the child, with
calm, unconscious cruelty. 'But you will see her presently. She has
gone to the bar to pay the bill, and when she has finished disputing
it she is bound to call for me.'

As if it had been waiting to confirm the prophecy, a voice called,
'Charis! Charis!' almost on the instant.

'That's my name,' said the child, helping herself to another fig, as
a middle-aged face, wrinkled, with a complexion of parchment under a
mass of tow-coloured hair, peered in at the doorway.

The colonel rose. 'Your niece, madam,' he began, 'has been
entertaining me for these ten minutes--'

With that he stopped, perceiving that, after a second glance at him,
the eyes of Aunt Netta, too, were growing round in her head.

'Charis, you naughty child! Sir, I do hope--but she has been
troubling you, I am sure--' stammered Aunt Netta, and came to a full
stop.

Charis clapped her hands, with a triumphant little laugh.

'But I knew him first!' she exclaimed, 'Yes, Aunt Netta, it's him!--
it's him, _him_, HIM! And isn't it just perfectly glorious