"Well, my little woman," threw out Halfinch, kindly. "Take care you don't drop your Great Grandmother, that's all."
"Oh no! I can carry her well enough," was the prompt response; and little Polly was soon bounding away across the grass merrily, with her ancestral burthen.
Betsy Jane and Jeremiah Halfinch had presented their passes at the door of the Opera House, listened to an Act of Wagner's incomparable music, and were now once more coming homewards. Their conversation had had a wide range, touching at one moment on the Norse Saga, and at another on the Binomial Theorem; now on the Philosophy of Epictetus, and now on the latest speculations as to the basis of Nebular Matter. They were deeply interested in their talk, and it was not till they were suddenly arrested in their progress that they became aware that their path was stopped by a Policeman who was kindly stooping over a little child who was crying over something she had dropped.
"Oh! it is little Polly; and she has let her Great Grandmother fall!" cried Betsy Jane, much concerned.
"Yes, and I have spilled her; and father will be so cross!" added the child in tears, pointing to the broken vase and to some white ash that laid upon the gravel path.
"Never mind, my little woman, we will soon make it all right," answered Halfinch, at the same time taking an evening paper from his pocket, and carefully collecting the broken fragments of the vase and its contents, and making them up into a neat parcel. "There," he added, "he'll have to get a new vase. But you may tell your father I think he'll find his Grandmother all there. So wipe your eyes and get home as fast as you can."
They watched the figure of the receding child.
"You don't have much work down this way nowadays?" inquired Halfinch amiably of the Policeman.