"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"
The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so young.
"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"
The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.
"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the shop to buy a big doll and forget all about it!"
"Please may I have a book instead of——"
"Leonie, that is very rude."
"Please, Lady Hetth. Go on, darling—-what kind of book."
"'Bout tigers an' snakes, oh! an' elephants. Weal animals. Dolls, you know"—she smiled as she confided the great secret—"aren't weal babies, they're just full of sawdust."
He lifted the child on to his knee, frowning at the weight, and smoothed the tangled mass of curls away from the low forehead with a touch which caused her to make a sound 'twixt sob and sigh, and to lie back against the broad shoulder.