The man looked through his bright spectacles right into Ronnie’s large brown eyes. He noticed that the child was very thin, and that he hunched his shoulders and drooped his head. The man laid his writing-pad upon the ground and lifted Ronnie on to his knee. "Old chap," he said, "you’ve got the blues, and you’re a bit of a misfit. That’s what’s the matter with you. But it won’t last. Believe me, it won’t last. I’ll do my best to find this Uncle Gerald of yours. I’m going to town this afternoon, and I’ll look him up in Burke." "Oh, he’s not in Burke," Ronnie declared positively. "He’s in Scotland; he’s wrote to me from there." "All right," said the man. "I’ll try and get the letter to him somehow. But you mustn’t expect too much. It may not be over-easy for Uncle Gerald to do anything, and it takes a deuce of a time for letters to get to Scotland." "Longer than to Burke?" "Hark!" said the man. "Isn’t that some one calling?" "It’s for me," exclaimed Ronnie, jumping off his knee. "I expect it’s time to go to dinner. You won’t forget? You do promise? You won’t tell them?" For he saw Miss Biddle and Cedric and Githa arrive breathlessly at the top of the slope. "Honest Injun," said the man. "But it’ll take a good week. Then you’ll hear _some_thing, if Uncle Gerald’s the man I take him for." They shook hands. Miss Biddle and his cousins were quite close, and he turned to meet them. Their questions and reproaches passed over his head lightly. He didn’t care. He had _done_ something at last, and he believed in the likhnè-wālā. "How long is a week?" he asked, when the enormity of his conduct had been thoroughly threshed out. "Seven days, of course. You _are_ an ignorant little boy," said Githa. * * * * * As it happened, Uncle Gerald _was_ in Burke, so the likhnè-wālā found his home address, and Ronnie’s letter reached him three days later, when he came back from a long day on the moors. There was another letter also, from the likhnè-wālā, and in it he used the very phrase he had used to Ronnie. "I fear," he said, "the little chap is a misfit, and it’s a painful game to play when one is a kiddy. He looked peaked and thin and timid, and he ought to be such a jolly little chap." He said a great many other things, did the likhnè-wālā, and the name he signed at the end of his letter was one well known to Uncle Gerald as the author of certain books he knew and cared for. * * * * * The week dragged on. It rained a lot and the days were long for Ronnie in the seaside lodgings. He kept count of the days, though, and at last it reached the sixth day from the time he met the likhnè-wālā, and no answer had come to his letter. Yet he never doubted him. He was convinced that somehow or other his letter would reach Uncle Gerald.