"Say it again, child, I like to hear it. I am in the dusk of my life. The dusk before darkness."
"And the darkness before light."
A gentle-looking woman murmured these words as she passed by, and the old man gazed after her with a sudden gleam of brightness in his eye. Then he turned to Christina:
"I am fond of little girls," he said. "I had a little girl of my own once, and when she was as small as you, she used to sit on my knee and ask me to tell her stories. Have you come here alone?"
"No," said Christina, a sudden panic seizing her, "I'm with Puggy and Dawn, and—and I believe they have left me!"
She looked wildly round. A sense of being lost in London rushed over her, but a minute afterwards, she caught sight of Puggy the other end of the room, and she dashed across to him.
"Oh, don't leave me," she gasped. "I thought you had gone away. Where is Dawn?"
"At some of his monkey tricks. I don't care for pictures; come on out, Tina."
"But we can't go without Dawn, where is he?"
"He's talking to two ladies; they seem to know him. We were just beginning to have a game of hide and seek, and he was under one of those seats when the ladies sat down, and then he mewed like a cat, and they sprang up in an awful fright, and then he crawled out and begged their pardon, and talked as if the whole place belonged to him, and they said they knew his father, and whilst they were jawing I came off."