Piers stooped to her with hands invitingly outstretched.  “Come along, Pixie!  We shan’t eat you, and I’ll take you home on my shoulder afterwards and see you don’t get copped.”

She uttered a delighted little laugh, and went upwards into his hold like a scrap of floating thistledown.

He lifted her high in his arms, crossed the room with her, and set her down before the old man who still sat at the table, sardonically watching.  “Miss Gracie Lorimer!” he said.

“Hullo, child!” growled Sir Beverley.

Gracie looked at him with sparkling, adventurous eyes.  As she had told Piers, she was not a bit afraid.  After the briefest pause she held out her hand with charming insouciance.

“How do you do?” she said.

Sir Beverley slowly took the hand, and pulled her towards him, gazing at her from under his black brows with a piercing scrutiny that would have terrified a more timid child.

Timidity however was not one of Gracie’s weaknesses.  She gave him a friendly smile, and waited without the smallest sign of uneasiness for him to speak.

“What have you come here for?” he demanded gruffly at length.

“I’ll tell you,” said Gracie readily.  She went close to him, confidingly close, looking straight into the formidable grey eyes.  “You see, it was my idea.  Pat didn’t want to come, but I made him.”

“Forward young minx!” commented Sir Beverley.

Gracie laughed at the compliment.

Piers, smoking his cigarette behind her, stood ready to take her part, but quite obviously she was fully equal to the occasion.

“Yes, I know,” she agreed, with disarming amiability.  “But it wouldn’t have mattered a bit if you hadn’t found out who it was.  You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Why not?” demanded Sir Beverley.

Gracie pulled down her red lips, and cast up her dancing eyes.  “There’d be such a scandal,” she said.

Piers broke into an involuntary laugh, and Sir Beverley’s thin lips twitched in a reluctant smile.

“You’re a saucy little baggage!” he observed.  “Well, get on!  Let’s hear what you’ve come for!  Cadging money, I’ll be bound.”

Gracie nodded in eager confirmation of this suggestion.  “That’s just it!” she said.  “And that’s where the scandal would come in if you told.  You see, poor children can go round squalling carols to their hearts’ content for pennies, but children like us who want pennies just as much haven’t any way of getting them.  We mayn’t carry hand-bags, or open carriage-doors, or turn cart-wheels, or—­or do anything to earn a living.  It’s hard luck, you know.”

“Beastly shame!” said Piers.

Sir Beverley scowled at him.  “You needn’t stick your oar in.  Go and shut the window, do you hear?  Now, child, let’s have the truth, so far as any female is capable of speaking it!  You’ve come here for pennies, you say.  Don’t you know that’s a form of begging?  And begging is breaking the law.”