"He's wanted by someone very particular," she repeated.

"By whom? Speak up, child! Who sent you?"

Heaven knows to what invisible spirits the child appealed. They were
certainly disreputable ones, as will be seen; but they heard her prayer,
and came to her now in her extremity. Hardly knowing what she did, she
opened on this man a pair of eyes seraphically innocent, and asked--

"W'y, haven't you seen my aunt?"

"Your aunt?"

"She _promised_ to call here at twelve-thirty, an' I was to meet her.
But"--here Tilda had to keep a tight hold on her voice--"per'aps I'm
early?"

"It's close upon one o'clock," said Doctor Glasson, with a glance
towards the mantelshelf. "What is your aunt's name, and her business?"

"She's called Brown--Martha Brown--_Mrs._ Martha Brown, and she keeps a
milliner's shop in the Edgeware Road, London," panted Tilda.

"I should have asked, What is her business with me?" Doctor Glasson
corrected his question severely.

"I think--I dunno--but I _think_, sir, she might be wantin' to enter me
for a orphlan. My pa, sir, was knocked down an' killed by a motor-car.
It was in the early days," pursued Tilda, desperate now and aghast at
her own invention. The lies seemed to spring to her lips full grown.