said, with a little gasp, "Oh, I am so hungry."

Tinker took this for a consent, put some aspic of pate de foie gras on
her plate, and watched her satisfy her hunger with great pleasure,
which was not lessened by the fact that, for all her hunger, she ate
with a delicate niceness. He had feared from her neglected air that
her manners had also been neglected. After the aspic, he carved the
breast of the chicken for her, helped her to salad, and mixed the ice
water with the _sirop_ to exactly the strength he liked himself; after
the chicken, he helped her to meringues, and after the meringues
lighted the kirsch of the _poires au kirsch_, which he had chosen
because it always pleased him to see the kirsch burn, and ate one of
the pears himself, while she ate the others. When she had finished her
little sigh of content warmed his heart.

He put the tray behind the seat, and settled down beside her for a
talk. Now that she was no longer hungry, she was no longer woebegone,
and her laugh, though faint, was so pretty that he found himself making
every effort to set her laughing. They talked about themselves with
the simple egoism of children; and he learned that her name was Elsie
Brand; that she was ten years old--nearly two years younger than
himself--that her mother had died many years ago, and that she had
lived with her father in his Devonshire parsonage by the sea till last
year, when he, too, had died. Then her Uncle Richard had taken her
away to live with him in London. Her story of her life in London
lodgings set Tinker wondering about that Uncle Richard, and piecing
together the details Elsie let fall about his late rising, his late
going to bed, his morning headache and distaste for breakfast, he came
to the conclusion that he was a bad hat who lived by his somewhat
inferior wits.

At the end of her story he tried to persuade her to come to the sea
with him and seek amusement there. But he failed; she would not leave
the seat. He gathered, indeed, from her fear of vexing her uncle that
that bad hat was in the habit of slapping her if she angered him, and,
for a breath, he was filled with a fierce indignation which surprised
him; she looked so frail. But he did not ask her if it were so, for
his delicacy forewarned him that the question would provoke a struggle
between her loyalty and her truthfulness. He entertained her,
therefore, with his reminiscences, and enjoyed to the full the
admiration and wond