"I'm so sorry, Mr. Bertram."
"My dear Miss Franklyn, I beg your pardon," the lawyer ejaculated, as he straightened his hat and readjusted his spectacles, which had nearly fallen off in the contretemps. "I hope I didn't hurt you?" and he looked apologetically into the bright smiling eyes of the girl, who found it difficult to refrain from laughing outright.
"Not a bit, thank you," was Kathleen Franklyn's reply. "It was quite as much my fault as yours. I am afraid I was not looking where I was going; these chicks were drawing my attention to an organ-grinder, with a little monkey, across the road."
As she spoke, she looked round, expecting to find the children close at hand. But alas! they had seized the opportunity--far too delightful to lose--of sister Kath's attention being distracted for a moment, and with wonderful noiselessness and rapidity had crossed the wide road, on which the traffic was somewhat heavy, and were already some little distance away, following with a small crowd of children in the wake of the wonderful monkey.
"Oh! those naughty children," she cried, "they are always up to mischief. You and Mrs. Bertram are saved no end of anxiety by having none."
"At any rate, they would have got past the monkey-admiring age by now," was Mr. Bertram's reply, albeit there was a gleam of sadness in his eyes, and a sigh escaped his lips. "But we must go after these young miscreants speedily."
"Oh! please don't trouble," said Kathleen as she walked on quickly beside him; "I shall soon pick them up, and I know you are in a hurry."
"Because I tried to knock you down," he replied, with an amused laugh. "The mischief I have done to-day is accumulating terribly."
"If you have done no one any more harm than you have done me, I think you need not begin to clothe yourself in sackcloth and ashes on account of your sins at present," was Kathleen's saucily given reply, as she shook hands hastily upon reaching Mr. Bertram's office, and hurried after the children, whom she had kept well in view.
"A charming girl," soliloquised the little lawyer as he entered his dull-looking office, and felt as if he had left all the brightness outside. "Franklyn is to be envied having such a troop of young people about him. But I daresay he looks at it in quite another light: probably that of £ s. d. Well, well, the best of us are never satisfied, but I must say life would be very different for Mary and me if we had a bright young thing like Kathleen Franklyn about the house." And then he turned his attention to legal affairs.