"And again no, and a hundred times over no!" cried the child merrily.
"The little lady will stop at home and you will take a boy with you--a
boy called Marius, not Mary."

"A boy! But I thought.--It is enough to puzzle one...."

"A boy who is a girl and a boy in one," laughed Mary. "But if you must
have it in plain words: I shall dress up as a boy to go with you;
to-morrow when we set out you will see, you will take me for my own
brother."

"Your own brother! With a little face like yours! Then the most
impossible things will become possible," cried Rustem laughing, and he
looked down good humoredly at the little girl. But suddenly the
preposterousness of her scheme rose again before his mind, and he
exclaimed half-frantically: "But then my master!--It will not do--It will
never do!"

"It is for his sake that you will do us this service," said Mary
confidently. "He is Paula's friend and protector; and when he hears what
you have done for her he will praise you, while if you leave us in the
lurch I am quite sure. . . "

"Well?"

"That he will say: 'I thought Rustem was a shrewder man and had a
better heart.'"

"You really think he will say that?"