The Little Princess of Tower Hill

by L. T. Meade

The pleasant tea-hour came, however, to an end at last, and Susy was just washing up the cups and saucers and putting the remainder of the feast into the cupboard, when the whole family were roused into a condition of most alert attention by a sharp and somewhat imperative knock on the room door.

"Dear heart alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Aylmer. "Whoever can that be? It sounds like the landlord, only I paid my bit of rent yesterday."

"It's more likely to be some one after you as laundress, mother," remarked practical Susy; and then Ben flew across the room and, opening the door wide, admitted no less a person than Sir John Ascot himself.

Mrs. Aylmer had never seen him, and of course did not know what an important visitor was now coming into her humble little room. Susy, however, knew Maggie's father, and felt herself turning very white, and took instant refuge behind Jo's sofa.

"Now, which is little Jo?" said Sir John, coming forward and peering round him. "I've come here specially to-day to see a child whom my own little girl loves very much. I've something to say to that child, and also to her mother. My name is Ascot, and I dare say you all, good folks, have heard of my dear little girl Maggie."

"Miss Maggie!" exclaimed Jo, a delicate pink coming into her face, and her sweet violet eyes becoming, not tearful, but misty. "Are you Miss Maggie's father, sir? I seems to be near to Miss Maggie somehow."

"So you are, little lassie," said the baronet; and then he glanced from pretty Jo to the other children, and from her again to her mother, as though he could not quite account for such a fragile and pure little flower among these plants of sturdy and common growth.

"My little Jo favors her father, Sir John," said Mrs. Aylmer, dropping a profound courtesy and dusting a chair with her apron for the baronet. "Will you be pleased to be seated, sir?" she went on. "We're all pleased to see you here—pleased and proud, and that's not saying a word too much. And how is the dear, beautiful little lady, Sir John, and Master Ralph, bless him?"

"My little girl is well again, thank God, Mrs. Aylmer, and Ralph is as sturdy a little chap as any heart could desire. Yes, I will take a seat near Jo, if you please. I've a little plan to propose, which I hope she will like, and which you, Mrs. Aylmer, will also approve of. This is it."

Then Sir John unfolded a deep-laid plot, which threw the Aylmer family into a state of unspeakable rapture. To describe their feelings would be beyond any ordinary pen.