‘Yes, I see,’ says Crosby. He has seen it all, indeed. As if in a dream, Miss Barry’s purse has been laid open to him and the contents made bare. The two shillings for herself, and the two for Susan, and for Betty, and for Carew—eight shillings in all—and after that nothing. He has seen, too, the pride of the poor lady, who would not acknowledge the want of means wherewith to provide photos of the younger children for their uncle abroad, but put her objection to their being taken on the grounds of their youth. He has seen, too, Susan’s face as she hears that Bonnie is not to be taken. Oh, the quick, pained disappointment of it! ‘At two, then,’ says he, ‘we shall meet at the photographer’s.’ ‘Yes; two sharp,’ says Miss Barry, who seems quite excited. ‘Susan, I think I shall wear my new lace cap.’ ‘I think you ought to wear your hair just as it is now,’ says Crosby to Susan in a low tone, as he bids her good-bye. It is impossible for her to refuse him her hand with her aunt looking on; and though Crosby is aware of this, it is to his shame, I confess, that he takes it and holds it in a warm clasp before he lets it go. CHAPTER XXXII. ‘But I know best where wringeth me my shoe.’ ‘Betty, was I looking frightful?’ asks Susan, drawing her sister away as soon as Crosby is out of sight. ‘Tell me quite the truth. Don’t gloss things over just to please me.’ ‘I won’t,’ says Betty, giggling. ‘I’ll be as honest as the sun. You looked’—pausing wickedly—‘something between Meg Merrilees and a wild Indian, with a bias toward the latter. But that needn’t put you out. He’s accustomed to wild Indians; and when one has lived with people fifty years or so, one gets to admire them. I shouldn’t wonder if he admired you. You must have taken him back to the good old days. Why didn’t you sing “Way down upon the Swannee River” for him? That would have finished the conquest.’ ‘You don’t seem to know what wild Indians are,’ Susan remonstrates calmly. ‘They live in North America, and couldn’t sing a nigger song to save their lives. You don’t seem to know, either, that it was in Africa that Mr. Crosby spent most of his time, and that the blacks there aren’t niggers at all.’ ‘Oh, it’s all the same,’ says Betty airily. ‘A black’s a black for a’ that; and if they don’t sing one thing, they sing another. And any way, I could see by the gleam in Mr. Crosby’s eye, as he looked at you and your flowing locks, that he loves wildness in every form.’ Susan is silent for a time; then: ‘Betty’—in a low tone—‘how old do you think he is?’ ‘I don’t think he has beaten Methuselah yet, if you mean that.’ ‘No; but really, I mean how old, eh?’ ‘Well’—carefully—‘allowing him the fifty years he spent with his blacks, and the fact that he told us that he started at twenty-three on an adventurous career, he must be now well into the seventies.’