“They do—­a great deal of it, unfortunately,” said Lancelot, lightly, trying to disguise from himself that his eyes were moist.  He seemed to realise now what she was—­a child; a child who, simpler than most children to start with, had grown only in body, whose soul had been stunted by uncounted years of dull and monotonous drudgery.  The blood burnt in his veins as he thought of the cruelty of circumstance and the heartless honesty of her mistress.  He made up his mind for the second time to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind in the morning.

“Well, go to bed now, my poor child,” he said, “or you’ll get no rest at all.”

“Yessir.”

She went obediently up a couple of stairs, then turned her head appealingly towards him.  The tears still glimmered on her eyelashes.  For an instant he thought she was expecting her kiss, but she only wanted to explain anxiously once again, “That was why I liked that song, ’Kiss me, good-night, dear love.’  It was what my mother—­”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” he broke in, half amused, though somehow the words did not seem so full of maudlin pathos to him now.  “And there—­” he drew her head towards him—­“Kiss me, good-night—­”

He did not complete the quotation; indeed, her lips were already drawn too close to his.  But, ere he released her, the long-repressed thought had found expression.

“You don’t kiss anybody but me?” he said half playfully.

“Oh, no, sir,” said Mary Ann, earnestly.

“What!” more lightly still.  “Haven’t you got half a dozen young men?”

Mary Ann shook her head, more regretfully than resentfully.  “I told you I never go out—­except for little errands.”

She had told him, but his attention had been so concentrated on the ungrammatical form in which she had conveyed the information, that the fact itself had made no impression.  Now his anger against Mrs. Leadbatter dwindled.  After all, she was wise in not giving Mary Ann the run of the London streets.

“But”—­he hesitated.  “How about the—­the milkman—­and the—­the other gentlemen?”

“Please, sir,” said Mary Ann, “I don’t like them.”

After that no man could help expressing his sense of her good taste.

“Then you won’t kiss anybody but me,” he said, as he let her go for the last time.  He had a Quixotic sub-consciousness that he was saving her from his kind by making her promise formally.

“How could I, Mr. Lancelot?” And the brimming eyes shone with soft light.  “I never shall—­never.”

It sounded like a troth.