‘Yes; and so am I!’ She nodded, and her eyes seemed to be devouring while they worshipped him.  ’But wasn’t it clever of me to know you at once?’

’It’s—­it’s about the cleverest thing I’ve come across in all my born days,’ stammered Colonel Baigent, collapsing into his chair, and then suddenly clutching the arms of it and peering forward.

‘But, of course, I’ve known you for ever so long, really,’ she went on, and nodded again as if to reassure him.

’Oh! “of course,” is it?  I—­I say, won’t you sit down and have a nut or two—­or a fig?’

‘Thank you.’  She gave him quite a grown-up bow, and seated herself.  ’I’ll take a fig; nuts give you the indigestion at this time of night.’  She picked up a fig demurely, and laid it on a plate he pushed towards her.  ‘I hope I’m behaving nicely?’ she said, looking up at him with the most engaging candour; ’because Aunt Louisa says you always had the most beautiful manners.  In fact, that’s what made her take to you, long—­oh! ever so long—­before you became famous.  And now you’re the Bayard of India!’

‘But, excuse me—­’

She had begun to munch her fig, but interrupted him with another nod.

’Yes, I know what you are going to say.  That’s the name they give to another general out in India, don’t they?  But Aunt Louisa declares he won’t hold a candle to you—­though I don’t know why he should want to do anything of the sort.’

‘It’s uncommonly kind of your Aunt Louisa—­’ he began again.

‘Do you know her?’ the child asked, with disconcerting directness.

‘That’s just the trouble with me’ Colonel Baigent confessed.

’She is my great-aunt, really.  She lives in Little Swithun, right at the back of Dean’s Close; and her name is on a brass plate—­a very hard name to pronounce, “Miss Lapenotiere, Dancing and Calisthenics”—­that’s another hard word, but it means things you do with an elastic band to improve your figure.  The plate doesn’t azackly tell the truth, because she has been an invalid for years now, and Aunt Netta—­that’s my other aunt—­had to carry on the business.  But everybody knows about it, so there really is no deceit.  Aunt Netta’s name is Wallas, and so is mine.  Her mother was sister to Aunt Louisa, and she tells us we come of very good family.  She never married.  I don’t believe she ever wanted to marry anybody but you, and now it’s too late.  But I call it splendid, your turning up like this.  And on Christmas Eve, to!’

‘It’s beginning to be splendid,’ owned the colonel, who had partly recovered himself.  ’Unhappily—­since you put it so—­it is, I fear, a fact that I never met your Aunt Louisa.’

’Oh! but you did—­in the street, and once in the post office, when you were a boy at the college.’

’Such impressions are fleeting, my dear, as you will live to prove.  Your other aunt, Miss Netta—­’

‘Oh! she will have been born after your time,’ said the child, with calm, unconscious cruelty.  ’But you will see her presently.  She has gone to the bar to pay the bill, and when she has finished disputing it she is bound to call for me.’