'I _know_ that,' cooed the girl, tucking her hand lovingly under the maternal arm. Then, after a pause, she said, 'What a lot of nice places and people you must have seen in all the years you have travelled about, Mr. Maude.' 'How old do you think I am, then?' I asked, struck by something in her tone. She hesitated, looking shyly from me to her mother. 'No, no,' said I. 'Tell me what you think yourself.' She glanced at me again, then suggested in a small voice, 'sixty?' Both Mrs. Ellmer and I began to laugh; and the child, blushing, rubbed her cheek against her mother's sleeve. 'How much would you take off from that, Mrs. Ellmer?' 'Why, I'm sure you can't be a day more than forty-five.' She evidently thought I should be pleased by this, the good lady flattering herself that she had taken off at least five years. My first impulse was to set them right rather indignantly, but the next moment I remembered that I should gain nothing but a character for mendacity by telling them that I should not be thirty till next year. So I only laughed again, and then Babiole's voice broke in apologetically. 'I only guessed what I did, Mr. Maude, because you are so very kind; you seem always trying to do good to some one.' 'Here's a subtle and cynical little observer for you,' said I, glancing over the child's head at the mother. 'She knows, you see, that benevolence is the last of the emotions, and is only tried as a last resource when we have used up all the others.' Babiole looked much astonished at this interpretation, which she understood very imperfectly, and Mrs. Ellmer shook her head in arch rebuke as she rose to go. They went upstairs together to put on their cloaks, but Babiole came flying down before her mother to have a last peep at the portraits which had fascinated her. I followed her into the drawing-room, where lamp and fire were still burning, and she started and turned as she saw my reflection in the long glass which hung between the pictures. 'Well, are you as happy at the cottage as you thought you would be?' I asked. 'Oh, happier, a thousand times. It is too good to last,' with a frightened sigh. 'Don't you miss the constant change of your travelling life, and the excitement of acting?' She seemed scarcely to understand me at first, as she repeated, in a bewildered manner, 'excitement!' Then she said simply, 'It's very exciting when you miss the train and the company go on without you; but it's dreadful, too, because the manager might telegraph to say you needn't come on at all'. 'But the acting; isn't that exciting?' 'It's nice, sometimes, when one has a part one likes; but, of course, I only got small parts, and it's dreadful to have to go on with nothing to say, or for an executioner, or an old woman, with just a line.' 'And don't you like travelling?' 'I like it sometimes in the summer; but in the winter it's so cold, and the places all seem alike; and then the pantomime season comes, and you have nothing to do.'