Least said, soonest mended! Tommy is on his feet again in no time, and has picked up Mabel before you could say Jack Robinson, and once again, nothing daunted by their ignominious entry, they rush up the room and precipitate themselves upon their mother. This pious act being performed, Tommy sees fit to show some small attention to the other people present.

"Thomas," says Mr. Browne, when he has shaken hands with him, "if you wait much longer without declaring yourself you will infallibly burst, and that is always a rude thing to do in a friend's drawing-room. Speak, Thomas, or die—you are evidently full of information!"

"Well, I won't tell you!" says Tommy, naturally indignant at this address. He throws a resentful look at him over his shoulder while making his way to his grandfather. There is a queer sort of sympathy—understanding—what you will—between the child and the stern old man.

"Come here," says Sir George, drawing Tommy to him. "Well, and did you enjoy yourself? Was it all your fancy painted it?"

Sir George has sunk into a chair with all the heaviness of an old man, and the boy has crept between his knees and is looking up at him with his beautiful little face all aglow.

"Oh! 'twas lovely!" says he. "'Twas splendid! There was lights all over the house. 'Twas like night—only 'twasn't night, and that was grand! And there were heaps of people. A whole town was there. And there were——Grandpa! why did they have lamps there when it was daytime?"

"Because they have no windows in a theatre," says Sir George, patting the little hot, fat hand that is lying on his arm, with a strange sensation of pleasure in the touch of it.

"No windows?" with big eyes opened wide.

"Not one."

"Then why have we windows?" asks Tommy, with an involuntary glance round him. "Why are there windows anywhere? It's ever so much nicer without them. Why can't we have lamps always, like the theatre people?"

"Why, indeed?" says Mr. Browne, sympathetically. "Sir George, I hope you will take your grandson's advice to heart, and block up all these absurd windows, and let a proper ray of light descend upon us from the honest burner. Who cares for strikes? Not I!"

"Well, Tommy, we'll think about it," says Sir George. "And now go on. You saw——"

"Bluebeard!" says Tommy, almost roaring in the excitement of his delight. "A big Bluebeard, and he was just like the pictures of him at home, with his toes curled up and a red towel round his head and a blue night-gown and a smiter in his hand."

"A cimeter, Tommy?" suggests his mother, gently.

"Eh?" says Tommy. "Well, it's all the same," says he, after a pause, replete with deep research and with a truly noble impartiality.

"It is, indeed!" says Mr. Browne, open encouragement in his eye. "And so you saw Mr. Bluebeard! And did he see you?"

"Oh! he saw me!" cries Mabel, in a little whimpering' tone. "He looked straight into the little house where we were, and I saw his eye—his horrid eye!" shaking her small head vigorously—"and it ran right into mine, and he began to walk up to me, and I——"

She stops, her pretty red lips quivering, her blue eyes full of tears.

"Oh, Mabel was so frightened!" says Tommy, the Bold. "She stuck her nose into nurse's fur cape and roared!"

"I didn't!" says Mabel promptly.

"You did!" says Tommy, indignant at being contradicted, "and she said it would never be worth a farthing ever after, and——Well, any way, you know, Mabel, you didn't like the heads."

"Oh, no; I didn't—I hated them! They were all hanging to one side; and there was nasty blood, and they looked as if they was going to waggle," concludes Mabel, with a terrified sob, burying her own head in her mother's lap.

"Oh! she is too young," says Barbara, nervously clasping her little woman close to her in a quiet, undemonstrative way, but so as to make the child herself feel the protection of her arms.

"Too young for so dismal a sight," says Dysart, stooping over and patting Mabel's sunny curls with a kindly touch. He is very fond of children, as are all men, good and bad.

"I should not have let her go," says Mrs. Monkton, with self-reproach. "Such exhibitions are painful for young minds, however harmless."

"When she is older——" begins Dysart, still caressing the little head.

"Yes, yes—she is too young—far too young," says Mrs. Monkton, giving the child a second imperceptible hug.

"One is never too young to learn the miseries of the world," says Miss L'Estrange, in her most terrible tone. "Why should a child be pampered and petted, and shielded from all thoughts of harm and wrong, as though they never existed? It is false treatment. It is a wilful deceiving of the growing mind. One day they must wake to all the horrors of the world. They should therefore be prepared for it, steadily, sternly, unyieldingly!"

"What a grand—what a strong nature!" says Mr. Browne, uplifting his hands in admiration. "You would, then, advocate the cause of the pantomime?" says he, knowing well that the very name of theatre stinks in the nostrils of Miss L'Estrange.

"Far be it from me!" says she, with a violent shake of her head. "May all such disreputable performances come to a bad end, and a speedy one, is my devout prayer. But," with a vicious glance at Barbara, "I would condemn the parents who would bring their children up in a dark ignorance of the woes and vices of the world in which they must pass their lives. I think, as Mabel has been permitted to look at the pernicious exhibition of this afternoon, she should also be encouraged to look with calmness upon it, if only to teach her what to expect from life."

"Good heavens!" says Mr. Browne, in a voice of horror. "Is that what she has to expect? Rows of decapitated heads! Have you had private information, Miss L'Estrange? Is a rehearsal of the French Revolution to be performed in London? Do you really believe the poor child is doomed to behold your head carried past the windows on a pike? Was there meaning in the artless prattle of our Thomas just now when he condemned windows as a social nuisance, or——"

"I suppose you think you are amusing!" interrupts the spinster, malignantly. It is plain that she objects to the idea of her head being on a pike. "At all events, if you must jest on serious subjects, I desire you, Richard, to leave me out of your silly maunderings."

"Your will is my law," says Dicky, rising. "I leave you!"

He makes a tragic, retreat, and finding an empty chair near Monkton takes possession of it.

"I must protest against your opinion," says Dysart, addressing Miss L'Estrange with a smile. "Children should be regarded as something better than mere lumps of clay to be experimentalized upon!"

"Oh, yes," says Barbara, regarding the spinster gently but with ill-concealed aversion. "You cannot expect any one to agree with you there. I, for one, could not."

"I don't know that I ever asked you to," says Miss L'Estrange with such open impertinence that Barbara flushes up to the roots of her hair.

Silence falls on the room, except for a light conversation being carried on between Dicky and Monkton, both of whom have heard nothing. Lady Monkton looks uncomfortable. Sir George hastens to the rescue.

"Surely you haven't told us everything, Tommy?" says he giving his grandson a pull toward him. "Besides Mr. Bluebeard, what else was there?"

"Lots of things," says Tommy, vaguely, coming back from an eager attention to Miss L'Estrange's evil suggestion to a fresh remembrance of his past delights. "There was a band and it shouted. Nurse said it took the roof off her head, but I looked, and her bonnet didn't stir. And there was the harlequin, he was beautiful. He shined like anything. He was all over scales, like a trout."

"A queer fish," says his grandfather.

"He jumped about and beat things with a little stick he had. And he danced, and there was a window and he sprang right through it, and he came up again and wasn't a bit hurt, not a bit. Oh! he was lovely, grandpapa, and so was his concubine——"

"His what?" says Sir George.

"His concubine. His sweetheart. That was her name," says Tommy confidently.

There is a ghastly silence. Lady Monkton's pale old cheeks color faintly. Miss L'Estrange glares. As for Barbara, she feels the world has at last come to an end. They will be angry with the boy. Her mission to London will have failed—that vague hope of a reconciliation through the children that she had yet scarcely allowed to herself.

Need it be said that Mr. Browne has succumbed to secret but disgraceful mirth. A good three-quarters of a full-sized handkerchief is already in his mouth—a little more of the cambric and "death through suffocation" will adorn the columns of the Times in the morning. Sir George, too, what is the matter with him? He is speechless—from indignation one must hope.

"What ails you, grandpa?" demands Tommy, after a full minute's strict examination of him.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," says Sir George, choking; "it is only—that I'm glad you have so thoroughly enjoyed yourself and your harlequin, and—ha, ha, ha, your Columbine. Columbine, now mind. And here's this for you, Tommy, because you are such a good boy."

He opens the little grandson's hand and presses into the pink palm of it a sovereign.

"Thank you," says Tommy, in the polite regulation tone he has been taught, without a glance at his gift—a touch of etiquette he has been taught, too. Then the curious eyes of childhood wander to the palm, and, seeing the unexpected pretty gold thing lying there, he colors up to the tips of his ears with surprise and pleasure. Then sudden compunction seizes on the kindly little heart. The world is strange to him. He knows but one or two here and there. His father is poor. A sovereign—that is, a gold piece—would be rare with him, why not rare with another? Though filled with admiration and gratitude for the giver of so big a gift, the child's heart commands him not to accept it.

"Oh, it is too much," says he, throwing his arms round Sir George's neck and trying to press the sovereign back into his hand. "A shilling I'd like, but that's such a lot of shillings, and maybe you'd be wanting it." This is all whispered in the softest, tenderest way.

"No, no, my boy," says Sir George, whispering back, and glad that he must whisper. His voice, even so, sounds a little queer to himself. How often he might have gladdened this child with a present, a small one, and until now——"Keep it," says he; he has passed his hand round the little head and is pressing it against his breast.

"May I? Really?" says Tommy, emancipating his head with a little jerk, and looking at Sir George with searching eyes.

"You may indeed!"

"God bless you!" says Tommy, solemnly.

It is a startling remark to Sir George, but not so to Tommy. It is exactly what nurse had said to her daughter the day before she left Ireland with Tommy and Mabel in charge, when her daughter had brought her the half of her wages. Therefore it must be correct. To supplement this blessing Tommy flings his arms around Sir George's neck and gives him a resounding kiss. Nurse had done that, too, to her daughter.

"God bless you too, my dear," says Sir George, if not quite as solemnly, with considerably more tenderness. Tommy's mother, catching the words and the tone, cheers up. All is not lost yet! The situation is saved. Tommy has won the day. The inconsequent Tommy of all people! Insult to herself she had endured, but to have the children disliked would have been more than she could bear; bur Tommy, apparently, is not disliked—by the old man at all events. That fact will be sweet to Freddy. After all, who could resist Tommy? Tears rise to the mother's eyes. Darling boy! Where is his like upon the whole wide earth? Nowhere.

She is disturbed in her reverie by the fact that the originator of it is running toward her with one little closed fist outstretched. How he runs! His fat calves come twinkling across the carpet.

"See, mammy, what I've got. Grandpa gave it to me. Isn't he nice? Now I'll buy a watch like pappy's."

"You have made him very happy," says Barbara, smiling at Sir George over her boy's head. She rises as she speaks, and goes to where Lady Monkton is sitting to bid her good-bye.

"I hope you will come soon again," says Lady Monkton, not cordially, but as if compelled to it; "and I hope, too," pausing as if to gather herself together, "that when you do come you will bring your sister with you. It will give me—us—pleasure to see her." There is such a dearth of pleasure in the tone of the invitation that Barbara feels her wrath rising within her.

"I thank you," she manages to say very calmly, not committing herself, either way, and presently finds herself in the street with her husband and her children. They had declined Lady Monkton's offer of the brougham to take them home.

"It was a bad time," says Monkton while waiting at a crossing for a cab to come to them. "But you must try and not mind them. If the fact that I am always with you counts for anything, it may help you to endure it."

"What help could be like it?" says she, tightening her hand on his arm.

"That old woman, my aunt. She offended you, but you must remember that she offends everybody. You thought her abominable?"

"Oh no. I only thought her vulgar," says Mrs. Monkton. It is the one revenge she permits herself. Monkton breaks into an irresistible laugh.

"It isn't perfect; it couldn't be unless she heard you," says he. The cab has come up now, and he puts in the children and then his wife, finally himself.

"Tommy crowns all!" says he with a retrospective smile.

"Eh?" says Tommy, who has the ears of a Midas.

"Your father says you are a social success, and so does your mother," says Barbara, smiling at the child's puzzled face, and then giving him a loving little embrace.