'I ain't spoiling it,' retorted Jerry indignantly, 'I'm only paintin' it wedder. Mum said I might.'

'I'll tell you what, though, young man! You'll spoil yourself if you suck your paint-brush.'

It came out of Jerry's mouth with the usual crimson flag of contrition all over his cheeks. 'It's orful hard to wemember when one is finking-finking of nothin' but the wed, and yet twyin' to play fair.'

'Play fair?' echoed Jack Raymond. 'What game are you playing now, Jerry?'

'Oh! it isn't a game; it's weal. Only, I mean the tiddly little bits'--Jerry, his tongue in his cheek, was laboriously at work again on Rajputana with a brush so surcharged with carmine that it left perfect bloodstains on the general tint of pale yellow--'I don't want, in course, to take more 'n belongs to the Queen, but they mustn't have the teeniest bit of what belongs to us, must they, Mr. Waymond?'

'I see,' replied the man slowly. 'You are painting the town red for Her Majesty--I mean the map.--Isn't it red enough as it is, Jerry?'

The child--in his excitement put down his paint-brush in the middle of Bengal as a safe spot. 'Not half wed enough! An' besides! there's mistakes an' mistakes, an' the yellow an' gween run over the line. I don't mind the yellow so much, 'cos we only allow them to be that colour; but it's dweadful with gween! An' then there's some orful fings. You see that spot'--he pointed triumphantly to an almost invisible speck of red like a midge bite--'I made that! It wasn't there. Mum said the map people fought it was too small to put in, but it's got to be, you see; so when I give the map to Budlu--Budlu's got a little grandson older nor me at school who learns maps, and mum said I might give him this one--I'll tell him it isn't quite the wight size. But it may be, some time, you know. Perhaps when I gwow up it will be.' The clear bright eyes grew dreamy, as Jerry, with conscientious care, skirted around the possessions of an extremely minor chieftain.

'Perhaps!' echoed the man still more slowly. 'And I expect you'd like to make it bigger, wouldn't you?'

'Wather! I should think I just would! Like as mum says her gweat-gweat-gwandfather-people--an' yours too, she said, Mr. Waymond--did. Just like Clive, you know, an' all the people that people wemember.'

The man's face was very close to the child's now, as resting his elbows on the table, he watched the crimson brush.