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but, of course, I shouldn’t have, and he’s really furious with himself and me, and now I shall have to begin all over again, and have a much harder time of it.”

Thus Alison, rather incoherent, and genuinely distressed.

“If he’s going to bear you a grudge for kissing and petting him, all I can say is that he’s an ungrateful little wretch,” remarked the Professor consolingly.

“Yes; but, Winthrop, you couldn’t expect him to like it.”

“You mean he’s not old enough to appreciate it? Pass me the salad, dear.”

“Of course—I wish he had been! No, I don’t, though, because it’s his being such a baby really that I love so. I really was perfectly horrid about it, and most unfair. Besides, he’ll get such a wrong idea of me, for I’m not usually tactless, you must admit that, Winthrop.”

Winthrop admitted it, and added that he wished his wife would eat some luncheon.

“You’re particularly concerned about this small urchin we’ve picked up,” he remarked, as she abstractedly buttered a biscuit.

“Yes, I am, dear—he really is extraordinarily interesting. To begin with he’s not—well, not a common boy. Even nurse saw that, and she’s not a person of perception—things have positively to run into her before she sees them. He’s quite a most mysterious small boy, Winthrop, and I’m going to be friends with him before I’ve finished; only I shall go warily now.”

She did go warily. For the next week or so she held as much aloof as she possibly could—paid rather fleeting visits to the invalid, and sat well away from him, reading aloud or talking on without waiting for answers; and if there were hands to be washed or hair to be brushed, she did it all with the most business-like air, hoping she was restoring confidence.