Well, there was moonlight at present, and really--under a clear, star-studded sky, with hard snow under the runners and jingling bells at the horse's neck--sleighing, well wrapped up in warm furs, is a very delightful sensation, and Lotty enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps she enjoyed quite as much a ride in a swift motor-car, and some families had these, and they seemed to run along where the roads were open at about a hundred miles an hour, although they might have been doing barely forty. And wherever she went Lotty took her violin with her, so that it is no wonder this infant prodigy was an immense favourite. The verdict on her was very much the same wherever she went: 'So gentle and well-behaved, so lady-like, and so unlike all one's conceived ideas of a show-child.' For, of course, Antony had thought proper not to conceal what Lotty really was--just a little gipsy lass. But there was one thing which probably accounted in some measure for Lotty's nice manners. Biffins Lee had not neglected her education; and this not out of any real kindness to the child, we may well believe, but because his desire was to have her an infant prodigy in every way possible. At places where a sojourn was determined upon, if of only a few weeks' duration, Biffins had seen to it that she had the best of teaching from the best of teachers in every branch of education that would tend to bring out her brightest qualities. Little wanderer though she was, Lotty loved knowledge, and learning was a delight to her. Everything taught her fell upon the best soil and took root, therefore rendering her mind not the barren and inhospitable desert we too often find it in children, who seem to regard teaching and education of all kinds as penal, as a kind of punishment from which they long to emerge and speedily forget. Lotty knew English well, and so she read the best of English authors old and new, and her knowledge of French was the key that opened to her the doors of a great library which was stored with marvels. And whenever Biffins had the chance he was fond of drawing Lotty out before people to show how much his child--he always put great emphasis on the possessive pronoun--knew. With music it was the same. But, after all, her accomplishments were all meant to bring grist to his own mill and make Lotty more valuable as a property. At one house a children's party was got up all for Lotty's own sake, and the little ones who met her were kept laughing at all her marvellous tricks till long past their usual bedtime.