she ran out of the room, and came back carrying her knapsack.

"What are you going to do?" asked her companion.

"I am going to tune the piano," the little girl said; and she took a
tuning-hammer out of her knapsack, and began her work in real earnest.
She evidently knew what she was about, and pegged away at the notes as
though her whole life depended upon the result.

The lady by the fire was lost in amazement. Who could she be? Without
luggage and without friends, and with a tuning-hammer!

Meanwhile one of the gentlemen had strolled into the salon; but hearing
the sound of tuning, and being in secret possession of nerves, he fled,
saying, "The tuner, by Jove!"

A few minutes afterward Miss Blake, whose nerves were no secret
possession, hastened into the salon, and, in her usual imperious
fashion, demanded instant silence.

"I have just done," said the little girl. "The piano was so terribly out
of tune, I could not resist the temptation."

Miss Blake, who never listened to what any one said, took it for granted
that the little girl was the tuner for whom M. le Proprietaire had
promised to send; and having bestowed on her a condescending nod, passed
out into the garden, where she told some of the visitors that the piano
had been tuned at last, and that the tuner was a young woman of rather
eccentric appearance.