Mr. Adrian’s kind heart went out to the poor little child who had remained so simple and so gentle amid such surroundings, and he was as interested in her as though she had been a young Patagonian or a small South Sea Islander. He gave his consent directly. Mrs. Adrian was not so easily mollified. She was sure that it was a plot, that robbers would come in the night, and that Gertie was to get up and let them in. Then she insisted that the child had various infectious complaints. But at last, having exhausted her objections, and made out fully to her own satisfaction that she was being turned out of house and home by a juvenile malefactor and a bloodthirsty mastiff, she gave her consent, and, having given it, was condescending enough to acknowledge privately to her daughter later on that Gertie was an interesting little thing, and much to be pitied. That night Gertie slept with Ruth, and Lion, with much coaxing, was persuaded to accept the hospitable offer of the mat outside the door. To Gertie all was new and strange, and the momentous events of the evening had not been without a disturbing influence on her mind; but Gertie was a child, and soon fell asleep. Happy childhood, when nothing that happens can banish sweet sleep from our eyelids! How many of us, grown to man’s estate, would give all that such an estate confers upon us for the privilege of closing our eyes and forgetting as easily and as quickly as Gertie Heckett forgot all that happened to her during the most eventful day in her little life! CHAPTER XXIV. OLD SWEETHEARTS. Ruth Adrian had only gathered from what Gertie had told her that Marston was in danger of being betrayed by his companions. The child had heard but a portion of the conversation, and even all of that she could not remember. Ruth concluded that Marston had been mixed up in something that was, she feared, discreditable, and that he was to be made a scapegoat. If this was so, the sooner he was warned the better. But how was she to warn him? She did not even know where he lived, and before she could find out it might be too late. He might be living under an assumed name; a hundred reasons might prompt him to conceal his identity. What was she to do? At breakfast she was pale and absent-minded. Her mother noticed it, and taxed her with wilfully destroying her health by worrying about a pack of vagabonds. Poor Gertie was the ‘pack of vagabonds.’ Fortunately the child had been relegated to the kitchen by Mrs. Adrian’s express command, and did not hear the good lady’s opinion of her. This did not decrease Ruth’s perplexities. She foresaw a constant source of dispute in poor Gertie’s presence. Her mother’s heart was large, but her tongue was bitter; and although doubtless she really heartily sympathised with the child’s friendless and forlorn condition, she would none the less make her a constant target for her arrows.