I pictured a lonely child in a large house with a Fraulein and a nurse, perhaps two; those I could face.  A tall, sad father I had never thought of!  I am afraid I am not suited for the profession, I am too impulsive.

I rang the bell.  The door was opened by a solemn man-servant, who did not show the surprise he must have felt when I asked for Master Thomas.  Another, still more solemn, showed me into a downstairs room.  I refused to give my name, and a very large, serious Thomas rose from a chair as I was ushered in, “A lady to see Master Thomas.”  So my errand was in part explained, but the part left to tell was by far the most difficult.  If only Thomas had lost anything but a screw!  No father could be expected to know how it had been treasured.  Supposing Thomas had been crying because he had a pain, which sometimes comes to children after tea?  Supposing he hadn’t been crying for his screw at all?  Supposing he repudiated all knowledge of it?

But here I was, screw in hand, and my story to tell.  I told if.  I was grateful to the tall, sad Thomas for being so solemn, and not even smiling, when I mentioned the screw.  He said he was very grateful for my kindness, and he went so far as to say he was sure Thomas had valued the screw.

While some one was coming, for whom he had rung, he told me that when he had taken Thomas to the Zoo, the only thing which he was really excited about was the mouse in the elephant’s house!  Somehow or other that little story put me at my ease, for it showed that the big Thomas at least understood in part the mind of a child.

A nurse, not sad-looking I was glad to see, came in answer to the bell, and the big Thomas asked if the little Thomas had lost a screw?  In that I was disappointed, the best nurse in the world might not know of a screw.  But the big Thomas did not wait to hear; be was sure the little Thomas had, and he said we were coming upstairs to restore it to him.  Of course I had said by this time that I was Zerlina’s sister-in-law.

We went upstairs, I following the tall Thomas, past the drawing-room, past that bedroom whose door I knew was closed.  A mother’s bedroom is nearly always in the same place in a London house, a child blindfolded could find it, and the handle of a mother’s door is always within the reach of the smallest child; and so easily does it turn, that the door opens at the slightest pressure of the smallest fingers.

Up we went to Thomas’s own bedroom.  There in his bed he sat, no longer crying, but still sad and solemn, with evidences in his face of a sorrow that rankled.  He smiled when he saw me, too much of a gentleman to show any surprise at seeing me in his bedroom.

“Thomas,” I said, “I have brought you back your screw which you lost.”  I put it in his outstretched hand, and a smile rippled all over his face.