hought to have broken him of
the habit, you remember?--and up, up it came from his stove. Body of
Bacchus! It killed inspiration. I could not paint, my Cherisette, and
Mirko could not play. And so we said: 'At least--at least the sun of the
hair of our Cherisette must shine in the dark England; we, too, will go
there, away from the garlic and the canary, and the fogs will give us
new ideas, and we shall create wonderful things.' Is it not so, Mirko
mio?"

"But, of course, Papa," the boy echoed; and then his voice trembled with
a pitiful note. "You are not angry with us, darling Cherisette? Say it
is not so?"

"My little one! How can you! I could never be angry with my Mirko, no
matter what he did!" And the two pools of ink softened from the
expression of the black panther into the divine tenderness of the
Sistine Madonna, as she pressed the frail, little body to her side and
pulled her cloak around it.

"Only I fear it cannot be well for you here in London, and if my uncle
should know, all hope of getting anything from him may be over. He
expressly said if I would come quite alone, to stay with him for these
few weeks, it would be to my advantage; and my advantage means yours, as
you know. Otherwise do you think I would have eaten of his hateful
bread?"

"You are so good to us, Cherisette," the man Mimo said. "You have,
indeed, a sister of the angels, Mirko mio; but soon we shall be all rich
and famous. I had a dream last night, and already I have begun a new
picture of grays and mists--of these strange fogs!"

Count Mimo Sykypri was a confirmed optimist.

"Meanwhile you are in the one room, in Neville Street, Tottenham Court
Road. It is, I fear, a poor neighborhood."

"No worse than Madame Dubois'," Mimo hastened to reassure her, "and
London is giving me new ideas."

Mirko coughed harshly with a dry sound. Countess Shulski drew him closer
to her and held him tight.

"You got the address from the Grisoldi? He was a kind little old man, in
spite of the garlic," she said.

"Yes, he told us of it, as an inexpensive resting place, until our
affairs prospered, and we came straight there and wrote to you at once."

"I was greatly surprised to receive the letter. Have you any money at
all now, Mimo?"

"Indeed, yes!" And Count Sykypri proudly drew forth eight bits of French
gold from his pocket. "We had two hundred francs when we arrived. Our
little necessities and a few paints took up two of the twenty-franc
p