pyrin, your fur coat for the crossing, and
a white helmet and umbrella for the arrival. You have lead pencils?"

"Plenty."

"A couple of Merrin's exercise-books should be enough to contain your
notes."

"When am I to go?"

"The sooner the better. I am at a standstill for want of the material.
You might catch the express to Paris to-morrow; no, say the day after
to-morrow." She looked at him tenderly. "The parting will be bitter."

"Very bitter," Mr. Eustace Greyne replied.

He felt really upset. Mrs. Greyne laid the hand which had brought them
from Phillimore Gardens to Belgrave Square gently upon his.

"Think of the result," she said. "The greatest book I have done yet. A
book that will last. A book that will----"

"Take us to Park Lane," he murmured.

The Rembrandtesque head nodded. The noble features, as of a strictly
respectable Roman emperor, relaxed.

"A book that will take us to Park Lane."

At this moment the door opened, and the footman inquired:

"Could Mademoiselle Verbena see you for a minute, ma'am?"

Mademoiselle Verbena was the French governess of the two little Greynes.
The great novelist had consented to become a mother.

"Certainly."

In another moment Mademoiselle Verbena was added to the group beside the
fire.

II

We have said that Mademoiselle Verbena was the French governess of
little Adolphus and Olivia Greyne, and so she was to this extent--that
she taught them French, and that Mr. and Mrs. Greyne supposed her to be
a Parisian. But life has its little ironies. Mademoiselle Verbena in the
house of this great and respectable novelist was one of them; for she
was a Levantine, born at Port Said of a Suez Canal father and a Suez
Canal mother. Now, nobody can desire to say anything against Port Said.
At the same time, few mothers would inevitably pick it out as the ideal
spot from which a beneficent influence for childhood's happy hour would
be certain to emanate. Nor, it must be allowed, is a Suez Canal ancestry
specially necessary to a trainer of young souls. It may not be a
drawback, but it can hardly be described as an advantage. This,
Mademoiselle Verbena was intelligent enough to know. She, therefore,
concealed the fact that her father had been a dredger of Monsieur de
Lesseps' triumph, her mother a bar-lady of the historic coal wharf where
the ships are fed, and preferred to suppose--and to permit others to
suppose--that she had first seen the light in the Rue St. Ho