e's favour. She was a creature of regular
but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring
disposition. On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would
have expected a deluge of questions. Bennington did. But she merely
stood and stared without winking.

"Hullo, little girl!" Bennington greeted her uneasily.

The creature only stared the harder.

"My doll's name is Garnet M-a-ay," she observed suddenly, with a
long-drawn nasal accent.

After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.

"What is your name, little girl?" Bennington asked desperately at
last.

"Maude," remarked the phenomenon briefly.

This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely
self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness. She
approached.

"D' you want t' see my picters?" she whimpered confidingly.

Bennington expressed his delight.

For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts
of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against
conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with
flat chests, and rat's nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted
playful sportiveness of disposition. Each of these pictures was
explained in minute detail. Bennington's distress became apathy. Mrs.
Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break
in on the duration of centuries.

"Now, Maude!" she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, "you mustn't
be botherin' the gentleman." She paused to receive the expected
disclaimer. It was made, albeit a little weakly. "Maude is very good
with her Book," she explained. "Miss Brown, that's the school teacher
that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight
better than lots as is two or three years older. Now how old would you
think she was, Mr. de Laney?"

Mr. de Laney tried to appraise, while the object hung her head
self-consciously and twisted her feet. He had no idea of children's
ages.

"About eleven," he guessed, with an air of wisdom.

"Jest eight an' a half!" cried the dame, folding her hands
triumphantly. She let her fond maternal gaze rest on the prodigy.
Suddenly she darted forward with extraordinary agility for one so well
endowed with flesh, and seized her offspring in relentless grasp.

"I do declare, Maude Eliza!" she exclaimed in horror-stricken tones,
"you ain't washed your ears! You come with me!"

They disappeared