“I’ll bring you back the moment you like,” said Noll. “We only have high tea in the evenings now, so my people don’t mind my being late to an hour or so; they know I’m with Netherby. But we’ll be back sharp, and you can come to tea with us, eh? I’d like to introduce you to my mother.” The child nodded, and led the way into the Major’s quarters. Noll, with the boy’s quick vision, took in a first picture of the little lady’s surroundings that never left him. It was a large and airy room, furnished within the absolute limits of necessity. In a corner by a door stood the child’s little white bed, but it required more imagination than was given to the ordinary to call up the image of a small child that stood every night listening at that other door to hear whether her father’s breathing were heavy enough for sleep; to call up the vision of the slight figure that nightly opened that same door with stealthy care to make sure of the candle being out, and all danger of fire set far from the reach of awkward drunken hands; it demanded a keener ear than his to hear the last sigh of the child as she slipped into her bed in the small hours of the night and lay down to take her long-delayed rest in that sleep that should have sealed her eyes for hours, and had already held the rest of the world for a half of the night. The dainty little figure that now stood before the mirror, giving to her hat just that touch which makes or mars the adornment of women, showed no peevish rebellion against, nor carping discontent with, the sordid burden of life that had been thrust upon her far too young and sadly thin little shoulders. She might indeed have gone, as she stood, to Court, and withal taught the ladies of fashion there assembled more than something of the queenly attitude. The atmosphere of the child it was that took the sense of emptiness from the empty room. The little table that stood before the fireplace, with a napkin spread upon it for tablecloth--it had been washed by her small hands--and the coarse tea-things set out upon it: these things and the kettle that bubbled on the hob had quite evidently been deserted by the child when she marched out to her attack in the passage. Noll now proceeded to make the tea at her bidding--she giving him orders as she gazed into the mirror, in which she commanded a view of the room.