way, Susan, tell your mistress--or is
it your mother?"

Mary Ann shook her head but did not speak.

"Oh: you are not Miss Leadbatter?"

"No; Mary Ann."

She spoke humbly; her eyes were shy and would not meet his. He winced as
he heard the name, though her voice was not unmusical.

"Ah, Mary Ann! and I've been calling you Jane all along. Mary Ann what?"

She seemed confused and flushed a little.

"Mary Ann!" she murmured.

"Merely Mary Ann?"

"Yessir."

He smiled. "Seems a sort of white Topsy," he was thinking.

She stood still, holding in her hand the tablecloth she had just folded.
Her eyes were downcast, and the glint of sunshine had leapt upon the long
lashes.

"Well, Mary Ann, tell your mistress there is a piano coming. It will
stand over there--you'll have to move the sideboard somewhere else."

"A piano!" Mary Ann opened her eyes, and Lancelot saw that they were
large and pathetic. He could not see the colour for the glint of
sunshine that touched them with false fire.

"Yes; I suppose it will have to come up through the window, these
staircases are so beastly narrow. Do you never have a stout person in
the house, I wonder?"

"Oh yes, sir. We had a lodger here last year as was quite a fat man."

"And did he come up through the window by a pulley?"

He smiled at the image, and expected to see Mary Ann smile in response.
He was disappointed when she did not; it was not only that her stolidity
made his humour seem feeble--he half wanted to see how she looked when
she smiled.

"Oh dear no," said Mary Ann; "he lived on the ground floor!"

"Oh!" murmured Lancelot, feeling the last sparkle taken from his humour.
He was damped to the skin by Mary Ann's platitudinarian style of
conversation. Despite its prettiness, her face was dulness incarnate.

"Anyhow, remember to take in the piano if I'm out," he said tartly. "I
suppose you've seen a piano--you'll know it from a kangaroo?"

"Yessir," breathed Mary Ann.

"Oh, come, that's something. There is some civilisation in Baker's
Terrace after all. But are you quite sure?" he went on, the teasing
instinct getting the better of him. "Because, you know, you've never
seen a kangaroo."

Mary Ann's face lit up a little. "Oh, yes I have, sir; it came to the
village fair when I was a girl."

"Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot, a little staggered; "what did it come there
for--to buy a new pouch?"

"No, sir; in a circus."

"Ah, in a circus. The