“Auntie was mistaken, darling.  Kitty was asleep, tired out with playing or running away from the dog next door.”

Leonie shook her head.  “Kitty’s dead,” she wailed, “lying all black and quiet, like—­like my dweams!”

There was a moment’s pregnant silence, during which Leonie turned round and snuffled into the great man’s collar, and he frowned above the russet head as he drew a block of paper and pencil towards him.

“What dreams, darling?”

“Don’ know—­dweams I dweam!”

The specialist sat still for a second and then laughed, the great kind laugh of a man with a big heart who adores children.

“Let’s play a game, Leonie!  You tell me about the dreams, and I’ll tell you about my new motor-car, and the one who tells best will get a big sweet!”

With a child’s sudden change of mood Leonie sat up, swinging her black silk legs to and fro, her eyes dancing, her lips parted over the even little teeth.

“I love sweets!” said she.  “You begin!”

“My car’s grey!” said Sir Jonathan Cuxson.  “What colour are your dreams?”

“Black!” was the unexpectedly decisive reply.  “Black with lots of wed—­wet wed—­and gween eyes—­lots and lots of eyes—­and—­and soft things I can’t see, and—­noises like kit—­kit—­kitty makes when she purrs!”

“Yes?”

“Yes! and people with soft feet like the—­the slippers Nannie wears at night so that I can’t hear them.  And—­and that’s all!”

She laughed like the child she ought to have been as she bit the end off a big pink fondant which had materialised out of one of a dozen little drawers in the desk, then holding up the other end to the man laughed again spontaneously and delightfully as he pushed the sweet into her mouth.

Then he put her on her feet, tilted the little white face back till the strong light shone into the opalescent, gold-flecked eyes, kissed the curly head and told her to run round the room, open the cabinet doors and look at the hidden treasures.

“May I touch them?”

“Of course, sweetheart!”

“I’m vewy sowwy you didn’t win,” she said in her old-fashioned way, “because you are vewy, vewy nice.  And”—­she continued, suddenly harking hack as a child will to a previous remark—­“and it is all vewy, vewy black, with a teeny, weeny light like the night-light Nannie lights, and——!”

She stopped dead and buried her head in the middle of Sir Jonathan’s waistcoat, fumbling his coat sleeves with her nervous little hands.

“Yes, darling!” said the man, without a trace of expression in his voice as he held up a finger warningly to the woman who had rustled in her chair.

“And—­and sometimes there’s a black woman.  And I’m—­I’m fwightened of her ’cause she calls me, and—­and—­pulls me out of bed by my head.”

“How do you mean, darling?  Does she catch hold of your hair?  It must hurt you dreadfully!”