“I’m sure it’s very kind of the lady to notice you at all!” cried his protectress, giving him an ineffectual jerk. “You’re no bigger than a flea; there are many that wouldn’t know you from one, and not one of them ‘performing’ ones either.” “You’ll find he’s big enough, I expect, when he begins to go,” Mrs. Bowerbank remarked tranquilly; and she added that now she saw how he was done for she couldn’t but feel the other side was to be considered. In her effort to be discreet by reason of his being present (and so precociously attentive) she became slightly enigmatical; but Miss Pynsent gathered her meaning, which was that it was very true the child would take everything in and keep it, yet that at the same time it was precisely his being so attractive that made it a kind of sin not to gratify the poor woman, who, if she knew what he looked like to-day, wouldn’t forgive the person who had stepped into her place for not producing him. “Certainly, in her position, I should go off easier if I had seen them curls,” Mrs. Bowerbank declared with a flight of maternal imagination which brought her to her feet; while Miss Pynsent felt she was leaving her dreadfully ploughed up and without any really fertilising seed sown. The little dressmaker packed the child upstairs to tidy himself for his tea, and as she accompanied her visitor to the door pleaded that if the latter would have a little more patience she would think a day or two longer what was best and write when she should have decided. Mrs. Bowerbank continued to move in a realm superior to poor Miss Pynsent’s vacillations and timidities, and her detachment gave her hostess a high idea of her respectability; but the way was a little smoothed when, after Amanda had moaned once more, on the threshold, helplessly and irrelevantly, “Ain’t it a pity she’s so bad?” the ponderous lady from the prison rejoined in those tones which seemed meant to resound through corridors of stone: “I assure you there’s a many that’s ever so much worse!” II