"Have you been walking about by yourself? I won't have it at this hour of the night. You can find your own way about the neighbourhood in the daytime, but I won't have you going into town by yourself, or even across the road in the dark. London is not Knock, remember, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to get lost. Don't let her roam about without you, Bridgie!" "'Twas only a step, and barely four o'clock!" Bridgie's forehead was fretted with anxious lines, but Pixie nodded back cheery reassurement. "Don't you repine about me, for I got on famously, and Mrs Wallace is coming herself to see you in the afternoon. I've engaged myself as a French lady to amuse the children, and you shall have the money to pay the bills. It was an advertisement in the paper, and you had to call between four and six, so I didn't want you to know before everything was settled. I don't know how much it will be, but Mr Wallace said I was worth a fortune, because I made them stop howling. There are only two, but outside the door you would think they were a dozen, and I made them laugh, and they sent me home in a carriage." "What _is_ she talking about?" Bridgie and Jack exchanged bewildered glances, and stared in incredulous silence at the little figure on the sofa. She had pulled off her hat, and with it the bow of ribbon, and the loosened hair hung down her back; her hands were crossed on her lap, there were dark shadows under her eyes. She looked so small and frail and childlike that Bridgie felt a lump rising in her throat at the thought of help coming from this strange and most unexpected quarter. She rose, and, going over to the sofa, took Pixie's hand between her own. "Is it the truth that you are telling us?" "It is, then! The solemn truth! Every word of it." "What made you think there was any need for you to disturb yourself? What put it in your head to answer an advertisement at all?" "Because I didn't want to be a burden to ye, my dear, after all the money you've spent on me education!" "A little midget like you to speak of being a burden! No one would guess you were there if you weren't so upsetting! It's no use fifty Mrs Wallaces coming to see me. Some other French lady will have to amuse her children. This one is wanted at home!" Pixie smiled composedly, and squeezed the clinging hands.