“Now _ain’t_ he shrinking and sensitive?” demanded Miss Pynsent, who had pounced upon him and, holding him an instant at arm’s length, appealed eagerly to her visitor. “Ain’t he delicate and high-bred, and wouldn’t he be thrown into a state?” Delicate as he might be the little dressmaker shook him smartly for his naughtiness in being out of the way when he was wanted, and brought him to the big square-faced, deep-voiced lady who took up, as it were, all that side of the room. But Mrs. Bowerbank laid no hand upon him; she only dropped her gaze from a tremendous height, and her forbearance seemed a tribute to that fragility of constitution on which Miss Pynsent desired to insist, just as her continued gravity was an implication that this scrupulous woman might well not know what to do. “Speak to the lady nicely and tell her you’re very sorry to have kept her waiting.” The child hesitated while he repaid with interest Mrs. Bowerbank’s inspection, and then he said with a cool, conscious indifference which Miss Pynsent instantly recognised as his aristocratic manner: “I don’t think she can have been in a very great hurry.” There was irony in the words, for it is a remarkable fact that even at the age of ten Hyacinth Robinson was ironic; but the subject of his allusion, who was not nimble withal, appeared not to interpret it; so that she met it only by remarking over his head to Miss Pynsent: “It’s the very face of her again—only for the complexion!” “Of _her_? But what do you say to Lord Frederick?” “I _have_ seen lords that wasn’t so dainty!” Miss Pynsent had seen very few lords, but she entered with a passionate thrill into this generalisation; controlling herself, however, for she remembered the child was tremendously sharp, sufficiently to declare in an edifying tone that he would look more like what he ought to if his face were a little cleaner. “It was probably Millicent Henning dirtied my face when she kissed me,” the boy announced with slow gravity, looking all the while at Mrs. Bowerbank. He exhibited not a symptom of shyness. “Millicent ’Enning’s a very bad little girl; she’ll come to no good,” said Miss Pynsent with familiar decision and also, considering the young lady in question had been her effective messenger, with marked ingratitude.