"Then you know in your heart," said Aristide, after a while, "that if I had not been only a football at the feet of fortune, I should never have deserted little Jean?" "I do, Mr. Pujol. My sister and I have been footballs, too." She added with a change of tone: "You tell me you saw our dear home at Chislehurst?" "Yes," said Aristide. "And you see this. There is a difference." "What has happened?" asked Aristide. She told him the commonplace pathetic story. Their father had left them shares in the company of which he had been managing director. For many years they had enjoyed a comfortable income. Then the company had become bankrupt and only a miserable ninety pounds a year had been saved from the wreckage. The cottage at Beverly Stoke belonging to them--it had been their mother's--they had migrated thither with their fallen fortunes and little Jean. And then Janet had died. She was delicate and unaccustomed to privation and discomfort--and the cottage had its disadvantages. She, Anne herself, was as strong as a horse and had never been ill in her life, but others were not quite so hardy. "However"--she smiled--"one has to make the best of things." "_Parbleu_," said Aristide. Miss Anne went on to talk of Jean, a miraculous infant of infinite graces and accomplishments. Up to now he had been the sturdiest and merriest fellow. "At nine months old he saw that life was a big joke," said Aristide. "How he used to laugh." "There's not much laugh left in him, poor darling," she sighed. And she told how he had caught a chill which had gone to his lungs and how the night before last she thought she had lost him. She sat up and listened. "Will you excuse me for a moment?" She went out and presently returned, standing at the doorway. "He is still asleep. Would you like to see him? Only"--she put her fingers on her lips--"you must be very, very quiet." He followed her into the next room and looked about him shyly, recognizing that it was Miss Anne's own bedroom; and there, lying in a little cot beside the big bed, he saw the sleeping child, his brown face flushed with fever. He had a curly shock of black hair and well formed features. An old woolly lamb nose to nose with him shared his pillow. Aristide drew from his pocket a Teddy bear, and, having asked Miss Anne's permission with a glance, laid it down gently on the coverlid. His eyes were wet when they returned to the parlour. So were Miss Anne's. The Teddy bear was proof of the simplicity of his faith in her. After a while, conscious of hunger, he rose to take leave. He must be getting back to St. Albans. But might he be permitted to come back later in the afternoon? Miss Anne reddened. It outraged her sense of hospitality to send a guest away from her house on a three-mile walk for food. And yet----