“No doubt he will.  He was wonderfully hale and strong for his years.”

“Ay! how d’ye do, Bertie?” interrupted the first speaker, holding out his hand to a young man who came up from Hyde Park and seemed about to pass with a smile and a nod.  “Who would have thought of meeting you in these godless regions?  I hear you are busy ‘slumming’ from morning till night.”

“Well, Colonel,” returned Bertie—­a slight, fair, boyish-looking man—­“I am so far false to my new vocation as to have lost some irrevocable moments looking at the horses and horsewomen in the Row.”

“Aha! the old leaven, my dear boy!  You are on the brink of perdition.—­Don’t you know Bertie Payne?” he continued, to his newly met friend.  “He was one of my subs before he renounced the devil and all his works.  He was with us at Barrackbore when you were in India.”

“I do not think we have met,” the other was beginning, when a young lady—­toward whom the Colonel had already cast some sharp, admiring glances as she stood on the curbstone holding a hand of the smaller of two little boys in smart sailor suits—­uttered a cry of dismay.  The elder child had rushed into the road, as if to stop a passing omnibus, not seeing that a hansom was coming up at speed.

The young man called Bertie dashed forward, and barely succeeded in snatching the child from under the wheel.  A scramble of horses’ feet, an imprecation or two shouted by the irritated driver, a noisy declaration from the “fare” that he should lose his train, and the scuffle was over.

The little man, held firmly by the shoulder, was marched back to his young guardian.

“Thank you!—­oh, thank you a thousand times!  You have saved his life!” she exclaimed, fervently, in unsteady tones.  Then to the child:  “How could you break your promise to stay by me, Cecil?  You would have been killed but for this gentleman!”

“I wanted to catch the ‘omlibus’ for you, auntie!” he cried, with an irrepressible sob, though he gallantly tried to hold back his tears.

“Hope the little fellow is none the worse of his fright,” said the Colonel, advancing and raising his hat.  “Can I be of any use?—­can I call a cab?”

“No, thank you; I will take an omnibus and get home as soon as I can.  Cecil will soon forget his fright, I fear—­”

“Sooner than you will,” remarked Bertie.  “There is a Royal Oak omnibus.  Will that do?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Come along, then, my young man; I will not let you go.”

Bertie put the trio into the vehicle, and the lookers-on saw that he shook hands with “auntie” as the conductor jumped on his perch and they rolled on.

“Gad! there’s a chance for you!” cried the Colonel as Bertie joined him.  “An uncommon fine girl, by George!  What a coloring! and a splendid pair of black eyes!”

“I suspect extreme fright did a good deal for both, poor girl.  Her eyes are brown, not black.”