as saucers.

"Which door? What carriage? What romance are ye telling me? Haven't
you been with Sylvia since I left you?"

"'Deed I have not. What made you fancy I had?"

"There was nowhere else to go, and you had not come home. I made
certain you were with Sylvia!"

"It's a bad thing to be certain about what you don't know. If any
mischief had happened to me, it would be annoying to you to remember how
you were laughing with your back to the fire, while I was run over in
the street, and having my legs sawed off at the hospital."

Jack frowned at that, and put a quick question.

"Have you been walking about by yourself? I won't have it at this hour
of the night. You can find your own way about the neighbourhood in the
daytime, but I won't have you going into town by yourself, or even
across the road in the dark. London is not Knock, remember, and it
would be the easiest thing in the world to get lost. Don't let her roam
about without you, Bridgie!"

"'Twas only a step, and barely four o'clock!" Bridgie's forehead was
fretted with anxious lines, but Pixie nodded back cheery reassurement.

"Don't you repine about me, for I got on famously, and Mrs Wallace is
coming herself to see you in the afternoon. I've engaged myself as a
French lady to amuse the children, and you shall have the money to pay
the bills. It was an advertisement in the paper, and you had to call
between four and six, so I didn't want you to know before everything was
settled. I don't know how much it will be, but Mr Wallace said I was
worth a fortune, because I made them stop howling. There are only two,
but outside the door you would think they were a dozen, and I made them
laugh, and they sent me home in a carriage."

"What _is_ she talking about?" Bridgie and Jack exchanged bewildered
glances, and stared in incredulous silence at the little figure on the
sofa. She had pulled off her hat, and with it the bow of ribbon, and
the loosened hair hung down her back; her hands were crossed on her lap,
there were dark shadows under her eyes. She looked so small and frail
and childlike that Bridgie felt a lump rising in her throat at the
thought of help coming from this strange and most unexpected quarter.
She rose, and, going over to the sofa, took Pixie's hand between her
own.

"Is it the truth that you are telling us?"

"It is, then! The solemn truth! Every word of it."

"What made you think there was any need for you to dist