"Or see? I used to say no one could hold a candle to our Grace but she-- she looked like a born queen all the time!" "Well, she belongs to us, too, so we've a right to be proud of her. Why, here's our Grace all the while!" True enough; Grace had been standing among the crowd all the while, rapt, like them, her eyes fixed on Valencia, and full, too, of tears. They had been called up first by the melody itself, and then, by a chain of thought peculiar to Grace, by the faces round her. "Ah! if Grace had been here!" cried one, "we'd have had her dra'ed off in the midst of the children." "Ah! that would ha' been as nat'ral as life!" "Silence, you!" says Gentleman Jan, who generally feels a mission to teach the rest of the quay good manners, "'Tis the gentleman's pleasure to settle who he'll dra' off, and not wer'n." To which abnormal possessive pronoun, Claude rejoined,-- "Not a bit! whatever you like. I could not have a better figure for the centre. I'll begin again." "Oh, do come and sit among the children, Grace!" says Valencia. "No, thank your ladyship." Valencia began urging her; and many a voice round, old as well as young, backed the entreaty. "Excuse me, my lady," and she slipped into the crowd; but as she went she spoke low, but clear enough to be heard by all: "No: it will be time enough to flatter me, and ask for my picture, when you do what I tell you--what God tells you!" "What's that, then, Grace dear?" "You know! I've asked you to save your own lives from cholera, and you have not the common sense to do it. Let me go home and pray for you!" There was an awkward silence among the men, till some fellow said,-- "She'm gone mad after that doctor, I think, with his muck-hunting notions." And Grace went home, to await the hour of afternoon school. "What a face!" said Mellot. "Is it not? Come and see her in her school, when the children go in at two o'clock. Ah! there are Scoutbush and St. Père." "We are going to the school, my lord. Don't you think that, as patron of things in general here, it would look well if you walked in, and signified your full approbation of what you know nothing about?" "So much so, that I was just on my way there with Campbell. But I must just speak to that lime-burning fellow. He wants a new lease of the kiln, and I suppose he must have it. At least, here he comes, running at me open-mouthed, and as dry as his own waistband. It makes one thirsty to look at him. I'll catch you up in five minutes!" So the three went off to the school. * * * * * Grace was telling, in her own sweet way, that charming story of the Three Trouts, which, by the by, has been lately pirated (as many things are) by a religious author, whose book differs sufficiently from the liberal and wholesome morality of the true author of the tale. "What a beautiful story, Grace!" said Valencia. "You will surpass Hans Anderssen some day." Grace blushed, and was silent a moment.