“He has been.  He is getting better.”

“And you are taking care of him?”

“Yes, I’m housing him for the present.”

“Trevor, it was good of you not to send him to the workhouse.”

Mordaunt frowned.  “It was not a case for the workhouse.  He would probably have died before he came to that.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” A shadow crossed her vivid face.  “But—­he won’t die now, you think?”

“Not now, no!”

“And you won’t let him go organ-grinding any more?”

“No.”

“That’s all right; though I don’t think it would be at all bad on fine days in the country, if one had a nice little donkey to pull the organ.”

“Nice little donkeys have to be fed,” Mordaunt reminded her.

“Oh yes.  But they eat grass and thistles and things.  And they never die.  Isn’t that extraordinary?  One would think the world would get overrun with them, wouldn’t one?”

“So it is, more or less,” observed Mordaunt.

“Trevor!  What a disgusting insinuation!” The merry laugh pealed out.  “I’ve a good mind to turn round and go straight back.”

“If you think you could,” he said.

“Of course I could!” Chris leaned forward and laid a daring hand on the wheel.

“Yes,” he said.  “But that won’t do it, you know.”

“But if I were in earnest?” she said, a quick note of pleading in her voice.  “If I really wanted you to turn round?”

He kept his eyes fixed ahead.  “Are you ever really in earnest, Chris?” he said.

“Of course I am!”

Mordaunt was silent.  They were crossing a crowded thoroughfare, and his driving seemed to occupy his full attention.

Chris waited till he had extricated the car from the stream of traffic, then impulsively she spoke—­

“Trevor, I didn’t think you were like Aunt Philippa.  I thought you understood.”

She saw his grave face soften.  “Believe me, I am not in the least like your Aunt Philippa,” he said.

“No; but—­”

“But, Chris?”

“I think you needn’t have asked me that,” she said, a little quiver in her voice.  “Even Cinders knows me better than that.”

“Cinders ought to know you better than anyone,” remarked Mordaunt.  “His opportunities are unlimited.”

She laughed somewhat dubiously.  “I knew you would think me horrid as soon as you began to see more of me.”

He laughed also at that.  “My dear, forgive me for saying so, but you are absurd—­too absurd to be taken seriously, even if you are serious—­which I doubt.”

“But I am,” she asserted.  “I am.  I—­I am nearly always serious.”

Mordaunt turned his head and looked at her with that in his eyes which she alone ever saw there, before which instinctively, almost fearfully, she veiled her own.

“You—­child!” he said again softly.

And this time—­perhaps because the words offered a way of escape of which she was not sorry to avail herself—­Chris did not seek to contradict him.  She pressed her cheek to Cinders’ alert head, and said no more.