"Please open the door a minute," requested Tom. "I've something to say to you."
Tiny Jim opened the door about a foot, and looked out. "What do you want?" he demanded.
"Only to tell you that I didn't point you out to Mr. Dumbell," Tom said, earnestly. "I was afraid you might think I had. You believe me, don't you?"
"Why, yes, certainly!" replied Tiny Jim, his broad face brightening. It clouded again a moment later, as he continued: "I ought not to have been there, but the lion-trainer's putting the lions through their performance, and I wanted to hear what was going on—hulloa!"
A purple-faced woman, whom Tom immediately recognised as Mrs. Sordello, had rushed up to the caravan, and was demanding to be told what the dwarf had done with "the child."
"I haven't seen her to-day," Tiny Jim answered. "You are talking of Grace, I suppose?"
The woman assented. "You're not hiding her?" she asked. "No? Then, what can have become of her? She knows Max wants her this morning. I'll give her something to remember by and by! I'll—"
She broke off abruptly, for the dwarf had shut the caravan door in her face, and, flinging up her head with an indignant gesture, she moved away. She had taken no notice whatever of Tom, who, finding Tiny Jim evidently had no intention of reappearing, now went home. "That Mrs. Sordello is a wicked, cruel woman," he declared, after he had told his morning's experiences to his mother; "you may depend upon it that poor little girl has run away."