Ruth had no necessity to find a home for Gertie, after all. Her mother, after having thoroughly aired her objections, and proved beyond a doubt that Gertie was endeavouring to turn her out of house and home, and that Ruth was endeavouring to bring her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, had suddenly veered round, taken the child under her immediate protection, and insisted upon Ruth keeping her as long as ever she liked.

Ruth, who had grown sincerely attached to Gertie, was only too delighted to take advantage of this change of attitude, and from that moment Josh Heckett’s grand-daughter was treated as one of the family.

Mrs. Adrian’s conversion had been brought about in a very singular manner.

Ruth’s great friend in all her troubles was her father. He would come from Patagonia or the South Sea Islands in a second if she asked him a question, and he had always the heartiest sympathy with all her little schemes.

Ruth asked her father’s advice about Gertie. What was she to do? She couldn’t send the child back. Of course, she intended that Heckett should know Gertie was safe, but she was determined, if possible, to keep her out of his clutches. She had hoped to be able to keep her for a little while until she could decide what to do, but her mother was so much against Gertie remaining.

Mr. Adrian laid down his book.

‘Then you really wish to keep the child near you for a while?’ he said.

‘I do, indeed, father. I am in some measure responsible for her leaving home.’

Ruth blushed as she spoke, for she remembered it was her anxiety to hear about Marston which had brought Gertie’s trouble upon her.

Mr. Adrian thought for a moment, then he rubbed his hands in evident glee. ‘I have it, my dear,’ he said. ‘Your mother’s objection to the child is the only thing we have to get over. Leave it to me to remove that.’

That evening, after Gertie had gone to bed, the usual little group sat in the dining-room.

Ruth was busy making nicknacks for a charity bazaar in which she was interested, Mrs. Adrian was knitting, and Mr. Adrian was deep in the adventures of a missionary who had gone out to Africa, and who for the first few hundred pages used his gun a good deal oftener than his Bible.

Mr. Adrian read a few choice passages aloud, and speedily aroused the indignation of his better half.

‘Missionary!’ exclaimed that good lady. ‘Well, if he’s a fair specimen of missionaries, I’m sorry for the heathen. Its a queer way of converting a black man to put a bullet through him.

‘But, my dear,’ urged Mr. Adrian, ‘it was in self-defence.’

‘Self-fiddlesticks! What business had the man there, poking his nose into their wigwams and interfering? How would you like a black man to walk in here and begin lecturing you? You’d try to turn him out, wouldn’t you? And then because you did that he’d turn round and shoot you, and say it was self-defence. Bah! I haven’t patience with all this mischief-making in outlandish parts.’

‘But, my dear, much good is done. This missionary was a very famous man, and he converted them at last. Before he left, the natives used knives and forks instead of their fingers, and the king of one very ferocious tribe, of cannibal habits, had all his prisoners of war roasted on Saturday afternoon to avoid Sunday cooking. How would civilization be spread, my dear but for these explorers?’

‘Civilization!’ exclaimed Mrs. Adrian, dropping half-a-dozen stitches in her excitement. ‘Don’t you think there’s room for a little more civilization at home before we begin to give it away to the blackamoors? Civilization ought to begin at home.’

‘You are wrong, my dear,’ said Mr. Adrian, closing his book and preparing for battle. ‘What do you say, Ruth?’

‘I think we ought to do a good deal more at home than we do,’ said Ruth gently. ‘I think sometimes the black heathen get a great deal more sympathy than the white.’

Mrs. Adrian declared Ruth was a sensible girl, and fired another volley at the enemy. The discussion had grown slightly heated when Mr. Adrian introduced the subject of Gertie, suggesting that the sooner Ruth found a home for her the better.

Then Mrs. Adrian fired up. Of course he objected to Gertie because she was an English child; if she’d been a black or a brown child he would have given her the best room in the house; as she was white and English she was to be turned out at once.

The more Mr. Adrian opposed Gertie, the more Mrs. Adrian championed her, until at last, for the sake of peace and quietness, the master of the house gave way, and consented, ‘to please his wife’s fad,’ that the child should stay as long as Ruth liked.

Thus were the heathen pressed into the service, and thus did Mr. Adrian win the battle by pretending to be beaten. It was not the first time he had won over his wife to his way of thinking by pretending to take an opposite view.

From that moment Gertie, in the eyes of Mrs. Adrian, was the outward and visible sign of a triumph gained over her betes noires, the foreign ladies and gentlemen of missionary books of travel. The child by her presence represented a great moral victory, and Mrs. Adrian was her devoted champion from that hour.

By her gentle nature and loving ways she rapidly endeared herself to all. Ruth was delighted, and her mind was relieved of a great burden. When Gertie had been with them a fortnight there was no one beneath the roof that would not have grieved sincerely and felt it a personal loss to be deprived of her sunshiny presence.

Her early days with the Adrians were uneventful. At her earnest request Ruth had not apprised Heckett of her whereabouts. The child pleaded so hard, and seemed so terrified, that Ruth contented herself with sending a message by a trustworthy person to the old dog-fancier that his grand-daughter was in a good home.

But the old man’s attempt to find out where the home was situated, or who was at the bottom of the child’s mysterious conduct, failed altogether. The message only reached him in roundabout way, being left with the person who kept the shop below his rooms, which Heckett only visited occasionally now.

The first great event in Gertie’s new life was the charity bazaar, at which, to her intense delight, she was allowed to assist at Ruth’s stall.

She came back full of it, and told Mr. and Mrs. Adrian at teatime all about the gentleman who had bought her violets, been so curious about Ruth’s name, and had seemed so much astonished when she (Gertie) told him her own.

Mr. Adrian was much amused by Gertie’s description of Egerton’s admiration of Ruth and his eagerness to know her name.

Ile looked across the table, and said with a smile:

‘Many a good match made through a charity bazaar, Ruth, my dear. Perhaps Gertie brought you a suitor.’

It was only a joke, but Ruth’s cheeks went scarlet.

The words had touched a tender chord. She had been thinking of Edward Marston. Since Gertie had come to her, she never looked at the child without thinking of him, and how strangely her little protÉgÉe had brought them together again.

And now her father, speaking at random, suggested that Gertie had brought her a suitor.

The words fitted in so perfectly with the thought that was passing through her mind at the time, that the crimson blood rushed to her cheeks and suffused them.

Had Edward Marston seen that blush, he would have known that his forgiveness was nearer its accomplishment than Ruth had given him any reason to hope.