Betty was breathing quickly as she came to this stage of Madam S——'s career. She turned a leaf, and a face smiling under a coronet looked at her.
"Madame S——, present day," the words below said.
A neighbouring photograph showed a mite with a pinched face and a tattered frock.
"Madame S——, at eight years old!" was the inscription.
"And I'm twelve," said Betty. "Twelve and a bit."
She turned her head, then raised it sharply. There standing beside her was her grandfather.
The two looked at each other.
What Betty saw at first—it must be confessed—was the keen-eyed, bent-shouldered individual who had appeared to the little street singer, and the silly little imaginative maiden waited for him to speak.
What the grandfather saw was a small girl of "twelve and a bit," in a pink print frock; a small girl with a brown shining face, golden-brown hair and brown eyes, and parted red lips, a little person in every way different from the pale-faced ghost who had visited him awhile back—so different that he did not know her.
He simply took her for a little school-girl and no more.