“And where do you generally live now?” asked Graham.

“Why, nowhere in particular,” Madelon answered.  “Of course not—­they were always travelling about.  Papa had to go to a great many places.  They had come last from Spa, and before that they had been at Wiesbaden and Homburg, and last winter they had spent at Nice:  and now they were on their way to Paris.”

“And do you and your papa always live alone?  Have you not an uncle?” enquired Graham, remembering the Belgian’s speech about the brother-in-law.

“Oh! yes, there is Uncle Charles—­he comes with us generally; but sometimes he goes away, and then I am so glad.”

“How is that? are you not fond of him?”

“No,” said Madelon, “I don’t like him at all; he is very disagreeable, and teases me.  And he is always wanting me to go away; he says, ’Adolphe’—­that is papa, you know—­’when is that child going to school?’ But papa pays no attention to him, for he is never going to send me away; he told me so, and he says he could not get on without me at all.”

Graham no longer wondered at Madelon’s choice of a game, for it appeared she was in the habit of accompanying her father every evening to the gambling tables, when they were at any of the watering-places he frequented.

“Sometimes we go away into the ball-room and dance,” she said, “that is when papa is losing; he says, ’Madelon, mon enfant, I see we shall do nothing here to-night, let us go and dance.’  But sometimes he does nothing but win, and then we stop till the table closes, and he makes a great deal of money.  Do you ever make money in that way, Monsieur?” she added naively.

“Indeed I do not,” replied Graham.

“It is true that everyone has not the same way,” said the child, with an air of being well informed, and evidently regarding her father’s way as a profession like another, only superior to most.  “What do you do, Monsieur?”

“I am going to be a doctor, Madelon.”

“A doctor,” she said reflecting; “I do not think that can be a good way.  I only know one doctor, who cured me when I was ill last winter; but I know a great many gentlemen who make money like papa.  Can you make a fortune with ten francs, Monsieur?”

“I don’t think I ever tried,” answered Horace.

“Ah, well, papa can; I have often heard him say, ’Give me only ten francs, et je ferai fortune!’ "

There was something at once so droll and so sad about this child, with her precocious knowledge and ignorant simplicity, that the lad’s honest tender heart was touched with a sudden pity as he listened to her artless chatter.  He was almost glad when her confidences drifted away to more childlike subjects of interest, and she told him about her toys, and books, and pictures, and songs; she could sing a great many songs, she said, but Horace could not persuade her to let him hear one.

“Why do you talk French?” she said presently; “you speak it so funnily.  I can talk English.”