“Perhaps you’ll tell me where she is, sir,” said he patiently.

“Leave it to me,” said the Bonnie Lassie, who has an unquenchable thirst for the dramatic in real life.  “And keep next Sunday night open.”

She arranged with Mary McCartney to give a reading on that evening, at her studio, of David’s “Doggy” from the “Grass and Asphalt” sketches which he had written in hospital.  It was a quaint, pathetic little conceit, the bewildered philosophy of a waif of the streets, as expressed to his waif of a dog.  For the supporting part we borrowed Willy Woolly from the House of Silvery Voices, and admirably he played it, barking accurately and with true histrionic fervor in the right places (besides promptly falling in love with the star at the first and only rehearsal).  After the try-out, Mary came over to my bench with a check for a rather dazzling sum in her hand, and said that now was the time to settle accounts, but she never could repay—­and so forth and so on; all put so sweetly and genuinely that I heartily wished I might accept the thanks if not the check.  Instead of which I blurted out the truth.

“Oh, Dominie!” said the girl, with such reproach that my heart sank within me.  “Do you think that was fair?  Don’t you know that I never could have taken the money?”

“Precisely.  And we had to find a way to make you take it.  We couldn’t have you dying on the premises,” I argued with a feeble attempt at jocularity.

“But from him!” she said.  “After what had happened—­And his mother.  How could you let me do it!”

“I thought you would have gotten over that feeling by this time,” I ventured.

“Oh, there’s none of the old feeling left,” she answered, so simply that I knew she believed her own statement.  “But to have lived on his money—­Where is he?” she asked abruptly.

I told her that also and about Sunday night; the whole thing.  The Bonnie Lassie would have slain me.  But I couldn’t help it.  I was feeling rather abject.

Sunday night came, and with it Miss Marie Courtenay, escorted by an “ace” covered with decorations, whose name is a household word and who was only too obviously her adoring slave.  Already there had been hints of their engagement.  Had I been that ace, I should have felt no small discomposure at the sight of the girl’s face when she first saw the changed and matured Weeping Scion of three years before.  After the first flash of recognition she had developed on that expressive face of hers a look of wonder and almost pathetic questioning, and, I thought, who knew and loved the child, already something deeper and sweeter.  Young David, after greeting the star of the evening, took a modest rear seat as befitted his rank.  But when the Bonnie Lassie announced “Doggy,” it was his face that was the study.