“Oh, is that you, Captain Ferrers?” she exclaimed. “Come and see your waif. She is the dearest little thing. Why, I do believe she knows you.”
Bootles whistled to the child, which promptly made a grab at his chain, and when he sat down on the sofa on which it was sprawling, tried very hard to get at the gold badge on his collar. Shoulder badges had not then come in.
“Mrs. Gray,” Bootles said, “she’s very well dressed, is she not?”
“Oh, very,” Mrs. Gray answered, smoothing out the child’s skirt so as to display the fine and deep embroidery. “Unusually so. All its clothes are of the finest and most expensive description.”
“I thought so; it doesn’t look like a common child, eh?”
“Not at all,” replied the lady, promptly.
Mignon’s Own–Illustration
“Well,” Bootles told her, “I’ve been most unmercifully chaffed, which was only to be expected; but the colonel takes my word about it, and of course the others don’t matter. I can’t think, though, why the mother has chosen me.”