“Right, Miss Dundas!” said Edgar warmly.  “If the little puss were older she would understand you better.  You unconscionable little sinner! what do you mean? hey?” good-humoredly taking Fina by the shoulders.

“Oh, pray don’t try and make the child a hypocrite,” said Adelaide.  “You, of all people in the world, Edgar, objecting to her naive truth!—­you, who so hate and despise deception!”

While she had spoken Fina had crawled over Josephine’s lap to the side where Edgar was standing.  She put up her fresh little face to be kissed.  “I don’t like Learn, and I do like you,” she said, stroking his beard.

And Edgar, being a man, was therefore open to female flattery, whether it was the frank flattery of an infant Venus hugging a waxen Cupid or the more subtle overtures of a withered Ninon taking God for her latest lover—­with interludes.

“But you should like Leam too,” he said, fondling her, “I want you to love me, but you should love her as well.”

“Oh, any one can get the love of children who is kind to them,” said Adelaide.  “You know you are a very kind man, Edgar,” in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.  “All animals and children love you.  It is a gift you have, but it is only because you are kind.”

The context stood without any need of an interpreter to make it evident.

“But I am sure that Leam is kind to Fina,” blundered Josephine.

“And the child dislikes her so much?” was Adelaide’s reply, made in the form of an interrogation and with arched eyebrows.

“Fina is like the discontented little squirrel who was never happy,” said Josephine, patting the plump little hand that still meandered through the depths of Edgar’s beard.

“I am happy with you, Missy Joseph,” pouted Fina; “and you,” to Edgar, whom she again lifted up her face to kiss, kisses and sweeties being her twin circumstances of Paradise.

“And with sister Leam:  say ‘With Leam,’ else I will not kiss you,” said Edgar, holding her off.

She struggled, half laughing, half minded to cry.  “I want to kiss you,” she cried.

“Say ‘With Leam,’ and then I will,” said Edgar.

The child’s face flushed a deeper crimson, her struggles became more earnest, more vicious, and her laugh lost itself in the puckered preface of tears.

“Don’t make her cry because she will not tell a falsehood,” remonstrated Adelaide quietly.

“She does not like me.  Saying that she does would not be true, and would not make her,” added Leam just as quietly and with a kind of hopeless acceptance of undeserved obloquy.

On which Edgar, not wishing to prolong a scene that began to be undignified, released the child, who scrambled back to Josephine’s lap and hid her flushed and disordered little face on the comfortable bosom made by Nature for the special service of discomposed childhood.

“She is right to like you best,” said Leam, associating Edgar as the brother with Josephine’s generous substitution of maternity.