“Thank you,” said Jeanie, in her voice of tired courtesy.  “You mustn’t help me.  No one must.”

“I can find the words you don’t know in the dictionary,” said Avery.

“No, thank you,” said Jeanie.  “Father doesn’t like us to have help of any kind.”

There were deep shadows about the eyes she raised to Avery’s face, but they smiled quite bravely, with all unconscious wistfulness.

Avery laid a tender hand upon the brown head and drew it to rest against her.  “Poor little thing!” she said compassionately.

“But I’m not little really, you know,” said Jeanie, closing her eyes for a few stolen moments.  “I’m thirteen in March.  And they’re all younger than me except Ronnie and Julian.”

Avery bent with a swift, maternal movement and kissed the blue-veined forehead.  Jeanie opened her eyes in slight surprise.  Quite plainly she was not accustomed to sudden caresses.

“I’m glad we’ve got you, Mrs. Denys,” she said, with her quiet air of childish dignity.  “You are a great help to us.”

She turned back to her French exercise with the words, and Avery, after a moment’s thought, turned to the door.  She heard again the child’s sigh of weariness as she closed it behind her.

The wails of the violin were very audible in the passage outside.  She shivered at the atrocious sounds.  From a further distance there came the screams of an indignant baby and the strident shouts of two small boys who were racing to and fro in an uncarpeted room at the top of the house.  But after that one shiver Avery Denys had no further attention to bestow upon any of these things.  She went with her quick, light tread down to the square hall which gave a suggestion of comfort to the Vicarage which not one of its rooms endorsed.

Without an instant’s hesitation she knocked upon the first door she came to.  A voice within gave her permission to enter, and she did so.

The Reverend Stephen Lorimer turned from his writing-table with a face of dignified severity to receive her, but at sight of her his expression changed somewhat.

“Ah, Mrs. Denys!  You, is it?  Pray come in!” he said urbanely.  “Is there any way in which I can be of service to you?”

His eyes were dark and very small, so small that they nearly disappeared when he smiled.  But for this slight defect, Mr. Lorimer would have been a handsome man.  He rose as Avery approached and placed a chair for her with elaborate courtesy.

“Thank you,” she said.  “I only ran in for a moment—­just to tell you that little Jeanie is so tired to-night.  She has had no time for her lessons all the afternoon because she has been helping with the little ones in the nursery.  She insists upon doing her French exercise, but I am sure you would not wish her to do it if you knew how worn out the child is.  May I tell her to leave it for to-night?”

She spoke quickly and very earnestly, with clear eyes raised to Mr. Lorimer’s face.  She watched his smile fade and his eyes reappear as she made her appeal.