"Who found the kitten?"

"Me," quavered the childish voice.

Lady Susan Hetth tchcked with her tongue against her rather prominent
teeth at the lamentable lapse in grammar, and looked crossly at Leonie,
who immediately lifted up the quavering voice and wept.

Sobs too big for such a little girl shook the slender body, whilst
great tears dripped from the long lashes to the tip of the upturned
nose, down the chin and on the knee of the famous specialist, against
which she rested.

"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"

The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a
shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable
eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so
young.

"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"

The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of
steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater
facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.

"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the
shop to buy a big doll and _forget_ all about it!"