"Keep perfectly still. Do not budge till the plaster sets." "Oh, it's setting already," she told him, "_hard_! You won't break off my foot, Cousin Antony?" "Nonsense." Whilst the cast set he recited for them "St. Agnes's Eve," a great favourite with the children, beyond their comprehension, but their hearts nevertheless stirred to the melody. As Fairfax leant down to break the model Bella helped him bravely. "_Now_, might I put on my stocking, Cousin Antony?" He had been pouring the warm plaster into the mould and had forgotten her, and was reproached. The twilight gathered and made friends with the storm as they waited for the cast to harden. Old Ann came in and lighted the gas above the group on the old divan. "Be the hivenly powers! Mr. Fairfax, ye've here a power of a dirt." Fairfax, who had taken a fancy to the patient old creature, who had' known his mother and was really more a slave to the children than his own black Mammy, bore the scolding peacefully. "Ye're the childest of the three, sor." Antony caught her arm. "Wait and see, old Ann," and he kneeled before the cooled plaster and broke his model, released his work and held up the cast. "For the love of hiven, Mr. Antony, it's Miss Bella's foot ye've got, sor." She stared as at a miracle, then at her little lady as though she expected to see a missing member. Bella danced around it, pleaded for it, claimed it. Gardiner was allowed to feel how cold it was, and Fairfax took it home in his overcoat pocket, anxious to get safely away with it before his uncle came and smashed it, as he had the feeling that Mr. Carew would some day smash everything for him. That night when she undressed Bella regarded with favour the foot that had been considered worthy of a cast and extracted sacredly a bit of plaster which she found between the toes, and Antony Fairfax limped home to the House that Jack Built, his heavy step lighter for the fairy foot, the snow-white, perfect little foot he carried triumphantly in his pocket. CHAPTER X