up person. You'll be going to dinner-parties soon." And he smiled
again. Maria stood motionless and patient. Her eyes gazed straight
before her. Her podgy face remained expressionless as dough.

"Answer the kind gentleman," said the Authority reprovingly.

Maria did not budge. A finger and thumb, both dirty, rolled a portion
of her pinafore into a pointed thing like a string, distinctly black.
She waited for the visitor to withdraw. But this particular visitor
did not withdraw.

"_I_ knew a little girl--" he began, with a condescending grin that
meant that her rejection of his advances had offended him, "a little
girl of about your age, who--"

But the remainder of the rebuke-concealed-in-a-story was heard only by
the Authority. For Maria, relentless and unhumbugged, merely walked
away. In the hall she discovered Tim, discreetly hiding. "What's _he_
come for?" the brother inquired promptly, jerking his thumb towards
the hall.

Maria's eyes just looked at him.

"To see Mother, I suppose," he answered himself, accustomed to his
sister's goblin manners, "and talk about missions and subshkiptions,
and all that. Did he give you anything?"

"No, nothing."

"Did he call us bonny little ones?" His face mentioned that he could