"Yes, sir, please, sir. Can I see her?"
"She's just gone out, not five minutes ago."
"Oh dear," sighed the little girl, "then I must have missed her."
"Was she going to see you, do you think?" Edmund asked. He always took the deepest interest in his fellow creatures.
"I expect so, but there's so many ways one can come. I shall be certain to miss her again going back and then——"
"And then," Edmund repeated.
"She'll be cross with me," the little girl replied, and smiled at Edmund.
Edmund smiled back and a friendly, confidential spirit was at once established.
They looked at each other in silence for a minute.
The visitor was dressed in a brown stuff frock of some stiff, unyielding woolen material. She wore a buff coloured cape reaching to the waist and a hat of black straw, trimmed with a brown ribbon, of that inverted-pie-dish shape seemingly peculiar to female orphans educated in charitable institutions, for no other mortal ever wears such an one.