“I don’t go in for improving my mind,” said Cecil.

“Then you should not hinder Essie from improving hers!  Think of letting her go home having seen nothing but all the repeated photographs of her brothers and sisters!”

“Well, what should she like to see?” cried Cecil.  “I’m good for anything you want to go to before the others are free.”

“The Ethiopian serenaders, or, may be, Punch,” said Jock.  “Madame Tussaud would be too intellectual.”

“When Lina is strong enough she is to see Madame Tussaud,” said Essie gravely.  “Georgie once went, and she has wished for it ever since.”

“Oh, we’ll get up Madame Tussaud for her at home, free gratis, for nothing at all!” cried Armine, whose hard work inspirited him to fun and frolic.

So in the twilight hour two days later there was a grand exhibition of human waxworks, in which Babie explained tableaux represented by the two Johns, Armine, and Cecil, supposed to be adapted to Lina’s capacity.  With the timid child it was not a success, the disguises frightened her, and gave her an uncanny feeling that her friends were transformed; she sat most of the time on her aunt’s lap, with her face hidden, and barely hindered from crying by the false assurance that it was all for her pleasure.

But there was no doubt that Esther was a pleased spectator of the show, and her gratitude far more than sufficient to cover the little one’s ingratitude.

Those two drifted together.  In every gathering, when strangers had departed they were found tete-a-tete.  Cecil’s horses knew the way to Collingwood Street better than anywhere else, and he took to appearing there at times when he was fully aware Jock would be at the night-school or Mutual Improvement Society.

Though strongly wishing, on poor Bobus’s account, that it should not go much farther under her own auspices; day after day it was more borne in upon Mrs. Brownlow that her house held an irresistible attraction to the young officer, and she wondered over her duty to the parents who had trusted her.  Acting on impulse at last, she took council with John, securing him as her companion in the gaslit walk from a concert.

“Do you see what is going on there?” she asked, indicating the pair before them.

“What do you mean?  Oh, I never thought of that!”

“I don’t think!  I have seen.  Ever since the night of the Phantom Blackcock of Kilnaught.  He did his work on Essie.”

“Essie rather thinks he is after the Infanta.”

“It looks like it!  What could have put it into her head?  It did not originate there!”

“Something my mother said about Babie being a viscountess.”

“You know better, Friar!”

“I thought so; but I only told her it was no such thing, and I believe the child thought I meant to rebuke her for mentioning such frivolities, for she turned scarlet and held her peace.”