‘Well, the witch fell down,’ says Tommy, goaded to endeavour, ‘an’ the goat sat on her.’ ‘Not on her,’ says Susan, with dainty protest. ‘You know you frightened me once, Tommy, but now—’ ‘Yes, they did, Susan—they did.’ In his excitement he has duplicated the enemy. ‘They all sat down on her—every one of them, twenty of them.’ ‘But, Tommy, you said there was only one goat.’ This is rash of Susan. ‘I don’t care,’ cries Tommy, who is of a liberal disposition. ‘There was twenty of them. An’ they all sat down on her, first on her stomach, an’’—solemnly turning himself and clasping both his fat hands over the seat of his small breeches—‘an’ then on her here.’ He lifts his hands and smacks them down again. He indeed most graphically illustrates his ‘here.’ There is an awful silence. Susan, stricken dumb, sits silent. She knew how it would be if she let that wretched child speak. Shamed and horrified, she draws back, almost praying that the earth may open and swallow her up quick. She casts a despairing glance at Crosby, to see how he has taken this horrible fiasco, before following Dathan and Abiram; but what she sees in his face stops her prayers, and, in fact, reverses them. Crosby is shaking with laughter, and now, as she looks, catches Tommy in his arms and hugs him. Another moment and Betty breaks into a wild burst of laughter, after which everyone else follows suit. ‘I’m going to publish your story, Tommy, at any price,’ says Mr. Crosby, putting Tommy back from him upon his knee, and gazing with interest at that tiny astonished child. ‘There will be trouble with the publishers. But I’ll get it done at all risks to life and limb. I don’t suppose I shall be spoken to afterwards by any respectable person, but that is of little moment when a literary gem is in question.’ Tommy, not understanding, but scenting fun, laughs gaily. ‘I don’t think you ought to encourage him like that,’ says Susan, whose pretty mouth, however, is sweet with smiles. ‘One should always encourage a genius,’ says Crosby, undismayed. There is a little stir here. Tommy has wriggled out of Crosby’s lap and has gone back to Ella, who receives him with—literally—open arms. Wyndham is watching her curiously. Her manner all through Tommy’s absorbingly interesting tale has been a revelation to him. He has found out for one thing that he has never heard her laugh before—at all events, not like that. No, he has never heard her really laugh before, and, indeed, perhaps poor Ella, in all her sad young life, has never laughed like that until now. It has been to the shrewd young barrister as though he has looked upon her for the first time to-day after quite two months of acquaintance—he who prides himself, and has often been complimented, on his knowledge of character, his grasp of a client’s real mind from his first half-hour with him or her.