"I only hope he'll get here safely!" breathed Miss Torry, who was always on the look out for disasters. "He's coming over with an irresponsible sort of man, and accidents do happen so easily that in the present day one can't be too careful. A precious child like that ought to be looked after by somebody that can be trusted. Mr. P---- can't be trusted. Why, don't you remember, he took his own two-year-old child for a drive somewhere on the East Coast last summer and it fell out of the old victoria without his knowing it, and he'd left it on the roadside quite a mile behind him before he missed it?" Yes, this was true. I had forgotten this incident, and her recalling it to my mind made me anxious. Still, this Mr. P---- had happened to be coming over to Paris on purpose to see me on some business matter, and the temptation to let him bring out the boy of my heart had been too strong to resist. Besides, the sight of Paris would do much to help forward Little Yeogh Wough's education. "How sorry he'll be to find you so ill and unlike yourself!" went on Miss Torry. (I had a cold so bad that it had practically become bronchitis, which, for some mysterious reason, usually happens to me in Paris.) "But how delighted he'll be with your new black and white frock, and with the hat with violets!" Yes. Even at that early age he loved my clothes. He loved them so much that I used sometimes to wonder if all his devotion to myself would go if I were shabby and lived in sordid surroundings. As it is, I ask myself now, in these later days, whom I should dress for if he should be killed in the war. His father has the kind of devotion that is not exacting about clothes, and would burn with as steady a flame if its idol were in sacking as if she wore the most marvellous confections of the French man-dressmakers. My racking fits of coughing would not let me go to the station to meet my treasure; but I dressed myself with as much care to be beheld by him as if he had been a grown man. I wonder how many mothers put themselves out to cultivate beauty for the satisfaction of sons of not yet eight years old? But the beauty cultivation was all on my side this time. For when he appeared, marshalled by his father and by the friend who had brought him over, he wore his little bowler and a badly cut, dark overcoat that he disliked, and his face was so sullen that the sight of him gave me a shock. "Nurse said I must wear this coat, and Auntie said so, too," he complained, as he struggled out of the objectionable garment after duly removing his still more objectionable headgear. "I've got a cap in my pocket that I wore coming over in the boat, but they told me I must put the bowler on again when I got to the station here. And I nearly didn't get here at all. I nearly fell out of the train." "Nearly fell out of the train?" "Lor'!" exclaimed Miss Torry, throwing up her hands. "I knew something was going to happen. Whatever was it?"