The newcomer was a child, a little girl about eight or ten years old.  Bennington liked children as a usual thing.  No one on earth could have become possessed in this one’s favour.  She was a creature of regular but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring disposition.  On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would have expected a deluge of questions.  Bennington did.  But she merely stood and stared without winking.

“Hullo, little girl!” Bennington greeted her uneasily.

The creature only stared the harder.

“My doll’s name is Garnet M-a-ay,” she observed suddenly, with a long-drawn nasal accent.

After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.

“What is your name, little girl?” Bennington asked desperately at last.

“Maude,” remarked the phenomenon briefly.

This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness.  She approached.

“D’ you want t’ see my picters?” she whimpered confidingly.

Bennington expressed his delight.

For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with flat chests, and rat’s nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted playful sportiveness of disposition.  Each of these pictures was explained in minute detail.  Bennington’s distress became apathy.  Mrs. Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break in on the duration of centuries.

“Now, Maude!” she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, “you mustn’t be botherin’ the gentleman.”  She paused to receive the expected disclaimer.  It was made, albeit a little weakly.  “Maude is very good with her Book,” she explained.  “Miss Brown, that’s the school teacher that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight better than lots as is two or three years older.  Now how old would you think she was, Mr. de Laney?”

Mr. de Laney tried to appraise, while the object hung her head self-consciously and twisted her feet.  He had no idea of children’s ages.

“About eleven,” he guessed, with an air of wisdom.

“Jest eight an’ a half!” cried the dame, folding her hands triumphantly.  She let her fond maternal gaze rest on the prodigy.  Suddenly she darted forward with extraordinary agility for one so well endowed with flesh, and seized her offspring in relentless grasp.

“I do declare, Maude Eliza!” she exclaimed in horror-stricken tones, “you ain’t washed your ears!  You come with me!”

They disappeared in a blue mist of wails.

As though this were his cue, the crafty features of Lawton appeared cautiously in the doorway, bestowed a furtive and searching inspection on the room, and finally winked solemnly at its only occupant.  A hand was inserted.  The forefinger beckoned.  Bennington arose wearily and went out.