was she doing there I wonder!' said Mr Meagles. 'Not going to it,
I should think.'

'She had written to me first,' said Tattycoram.

'Oh, Tatty!' murmured her mistress, 'take your hands away. I feel as if
some one else was touching me!'

She said it in a quick involuntary way, but half playfully, and not more
petulantly or disagreeably than a favourite child might have done, who
laughed next moment. Tattycoram set her full red lips together, and
crossed her arms upon her bosom. 'Did you wish to know, sir,' she said,
looking at Mr Meagles, 'what Miss Wade wrote to me about?'

'Well, Tattycoram,' returned Mr Meagles, 'since you ask the question,
and we are all friends here, perhaps you may as well mention it, if you
are so inclined.'

'She knew, when we were travelling, where you lived,' said Tattycoram,
'and she had seen me not quite--not quite--'

'Not quite in a good temper, Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles,
shaking his head at the dark eyes with a quiet caution. 'Take a little
time--count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'

She pressed her lips together again, and took a long deep breath.

'So she wrote to me to say that if I ever felt myself hurt,' she looked
down at her young mistress, 'or found myself worried,' she looked down
at her again, 'I might go to her, and be considerately treated. I was
to think of it, and could speak to her by the church. So I went there to
thank her.'

'Tatty,' said her young mistress, putting her hand up over her shoulder
that the other might take it, 'Miss Wade almost frightened me when we
parted, and I scarcely like to think of her just now as having been so
near me without my knowing it. Tatty dear!'

Tatty stood for a moment, immovable.

'Hey?' cried Mr Meagles. 'Count another five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'

She might have counted a dozen, when she bent and put her lips to the
caressing hand. It patted her cheek, as it touched the owner's beautiful
curls, and Tattycoram went away.

'Now there,' said Mr Meagles softly, as he gave a turn to the
dumb-waiter on his right hand to twirl the sugar towards himself.
'There's a girl who might be lost and ruined, if she wasn't among
practical people. Mother and I know, solely from being practical, that
there are times when that girl's whole nature seems to roughen itself
against seeing us so bound up in Pet. No father and mother were bound
up in her, poor soul. I don't like to think of the way in which that
unfortunate child, with