"Not to-night, Roland. You know that, because I said so. You must go to sleep now."
"Won't you call me Little Yeogh Wough?" he persisted wistfully.
"No. You're not Little Yeogh Wough to-night. You're not the same boy that I left when I came away from home. You're only Roland. I don't know how it is. You used to keep your true self when you went away from me, but this time you've lost it. I suppose a fortnight has been too long. Now go to sleep!"
"They've taken all the romance out of him," I said to Miss Torry, when I got back to the sitting-room.
"Lor'!" she exclaimed. And up went her hands again until she looked like a surprised angel. "The things that are going on in that house! They've got the puppies all indoors, messing up the whole place; and the cook's given notice, because Roland has been up into her room and made her window so that it won't shut—in this weather, too!—because he wanted to rig up a toy telephone between there and one of the servants' room windows in the next house. He says the boy next door is allowed to do what he likes, so he doesn't see why he himself shouldn't be. Did you ever hear of such a thing?"
"Well, you'll have to take him out of my way to-morrow, Miss Torry. Take him round and show him Paris. I'll work by myself. Strange, that he should have altered so much in a fortnight! But that's just because he's not commonplace. Commonplace people can't rise, but they can't sink, either. It takes a person with something great in him to get down low."
So Little Yeogh Wough was taken by Miss Torry round Paris, and he also went with me into shops and to do business in post offices, and quite learned the ways of the place and of the people. But it made my cold worse.
"Never mind," I said. "My having a bad cold like this means that my new photographs will be good. I always pay for a good photograph with an illness. I know I should pay for a good oil-painting portrait with my death."
Little Yeogh Wough wrote and told my dear friend Mrs. Croy how he was getting on. And Mrs. Croy responded by sending coals to Newcastle in the shape of an enormous box of chocolates.