“Not ’e.  You never do, you know, if once you goes to the dogs.  There ain’t no wye back.  I was wonderin’, since we’ve been acquainted, kiddy, if your pa didn’t go the sime road?  It ’appens in all clarses.”

“Oh no, my father was lost at sea, not on the road; and there aren’t any dogs there, at least I don’t think so,” said Rosemary.

“If it’s only the sea ’as swallered ’im, ’e may be cast up again, any day, alive an’ bloomin’,” replied Jane cheerfully.  “My ma ’ad a grite friend, sold winkles; ’er ’usbin was lost at sea for years and years, till just wen she was comfortably settled with ’er second, along ’e comes, as large as loife.  Besides, I’ve read of such things in the Princess Novelettes; only there it’s most generally lovers, not ’usbins, nor yet fathers.  Would you know yours again, if you seen ’im?”

Rosemary shook her head doubtfully, and her falling hair of pale, shimmering gold waved like a wheat-field shaken by a breeze.  “Angel lost him when I was only two,” the child explained.  “She’s never talked much to me about him; but we used to live in a big house in London—­because my father was English, you know, though Angel’s American—­and I had a nurse who held me in her lap and told me things.  I heard her say to one of the servants once that my father had been lost on a yacht, and that he was oh, ever such a handsome man.  But—­but she said—­” Rosemary faltered, her grey-blue eyes suddenly large and troubled.

“What was it she said?” prompted Jane, with so much sympathetic interest that the little girl could not refuse to answer.  Nevertheless, she felt that it would not be right to finish her sentence.

“If you please, I’d rather not tell you what Nurse said,” she pleaded.  “But anyway, I’d give everything I’ve got if my father would get found again.  You see, it isn’t only not having proper Christmases any more, that makes me feel sad, it’s because Angel has to work so hard for me; and if I had a father, I s’pose he’d do that.”

“If ’e didn’t he’d deserve to get What For,” said Jane, decidedly.  “If you was a child in a story book, your pa’d come back and be lookin’ for you everywhere, on Christmas Eve; this Christmas Eve as ever was.”

“Oh, would he?” cried Rosemary, a bright colour flaming on her little soft cheeks.

“Yes; and what’s more,” went on her hostess, warming to the subject, “you’d know ’im, the hinstant you clapped heyes on his fice, by ’eaven-sent hinstinct.”

“What’s ’eaven-sent hinstinct?” demanded Rosemary.

“The feelin’ you ’ave in your ’eart for a father, wot’s planted there by Providence,” explained Jane.  “Now do you hunderstand?  Because if you do, I don’t know but you’d better be trottin’.  Biby’s gorn to sleep, and seems to be sleepin’ light.”

“Yes, I think I understand,” Rosemary whispered, jumping up from her footstool.  “Goodbye.  And thank you very much for letting me come and see you and the baby.”