“We wanted children,” said Danby, “not hobbledehoys”

“Hobbledehoys! no, but there is reason in everything.  You couldn’t suppose I wanted infants like these—­look at that little scrap hidden in Adela’s frock.  It’s positively dreadful to contemplate!  They will be getting under my feet.  I shall be treading upon them, and hurting them seriously.”

“No you won’t, Jack; I’ll answer for that.”

“Why not, pray?”

“Because of their individuality.  They are small, but they are people.  When Moppet comes into a room everybody knows she is there.  She is a little scared now; but she will be as bold as brass in a quarter of an hour.”

Sir John Penlyon put on his spectacles and looked at the little hirelings more critically.  Their youth and diminutive size had been a shock to him.  He had expected bouncing children with rosy faces, long auburn hair, and a good deal of well-developed leg showing beneath a short frock.  These, measured against his expectations, were positively microscopic.

Their cheeks were pale rather than rosy.  Their hair was neither auburn nor long.  It was dark hair, and it was cropped close to the neat little heads, showing every bump in the broad, clever-looking foreheads.  Sir John’s disapproving eyes showed him that the children were more intelligent than the common run of children; but for the moment he was not disposed to accept intelligence instead of size.

“They are preposterously small,” he said—­“not at all the kind of thing I expected.  They will get lost under chairs or buried alive in waste-paper baskets.  I wash my hands of them, Take them away, Adela.  Let them be fed and put to bed.”  Then turning to Mr. Danby as if to dismiss the subject, “Anything stirring in London when you were there, Tom?”

Before Danby could answer, Moppet emerged from her shelter, advanced deliberately, and planted herself in front of Sir John Penlyon, looking him straight in the face.

“I’m sorry you don’t like us, Mr. Old Gentleman,” she said.  Every syllable came with clear precision from those infantine lips.  Moppet’s strong point was her power of speech.  Firm, decisive, correct as to intonation came every sentence from the lips of this small personage.  Ponderous polysyllables were no trouble to Moppet.  There was only an occasional consonant that baffled her.

“Who says I don’t like you?” said Sir John, taken aback, and lifting the animated bundle of red cloth on to his knee.

He found there was something very substantial inside the wooly cloak and gaiters:  a pair of round plump arms and sturdy little legs, a compact little figure which perched firmly on his knee.  “You said so,” retorted Moppet, with her large gray eyes very wide open, and looking full into his.  “You don’t like us because we are so very small.  Everybody says we are small, but everybody doesn’t mind.  Why do you mind?”

“I didn’t say anything about not liking you, little one.  I was only afraid you were too small to go out visiting.”