Sigma was still “doing it,” so far as howling went, but she was also scrambling up, with her elbow held over her head, as if she counted on a thumping. From under her bare forearm her streaming eyes looked out at Mar. Whether the man’s quiet face in the midst of the uproar astonished, calmed her—she gaped, letting the rude lamentation die in her throat. “Men—_Meesis Marr—rr_!” she said under her breath, picking up the cup. Mrs. Mar’s husband held out his hand for it. “It’s only the handle,” he said, and set the cup down on the writing-table, that he might change the position of the fretting child. For his long-suffering daughter was at last roused to protest. The little maid-servant wiped her eyes, and, with the air of one who is willing to let bygones be bygones, shuffled a step nearer to the desk. “Me—Gif Sigma,” she said, and held out her red arms. Mar looked up, understood, and handed over the baby. It was curious to see the practised sureness with which this female barbarian—who caught her big feet in the carpet and dropped the china—with what skill she handled that fragile and intricate mechanism, an infant. Mar watched her as she stood there, swaying her own thick body back and forth like a human rocking-chair, holding the child in sure comfort, patting it softly, and crooning to it uncouth words in a foreign tongue. Miss Mar understood perfectly, and responded by laying her small pink face against the scullion’s untidy gown and falling back into slumber. The opening of the front door, and voices in the hall—above all one voice ordaining that certain persons should go up-stairs and _wait for her_!—made Sigma pause, listen, and then, still holding close the pacified infant, she beat a stealthy retreat, shutting the kitchen door behind her with a softness incredible. Mrs. Mar, upon her reappearance, was seen to be ushering in by the shoulder an anxious little boy of eight or nine. As with some force she conveyed him across the room, his foot caught in the same place where Sigma had met defeat. But Sigma had not been sustained by Mrs. Mar’s hand. The lady merely unhooked the boy with an extra shake. Then, with her free hand, she pulled his chair out from the table, and thrust him into it. “Now, you’re to sit right there, and then I’ll know that at least till supper-time you won’t be getting my children into any more mischief.” Mar had looked up upon their entrance, seemed about to speak, and then dropped a discreet head over his work. “Where’s the baby?” demanded his wife. “Sigma—” “This precious protégé of yours,” interrupted the lady, again straightening the carpet with the toe of her shoe; “this precious protégé of yours has pulled up a plank out of the sidewalk, dragged it across the field down to the duck-pond, and there I found him, using it as a raft.” “_I_ hadn’t used it—not yet.” A world of lost opportunity was heavily recalled. “Oh, no, _you_ weren’t using it.” But the irony was lost.