everything she needs for her kitchen always."

"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would----"

At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade
her new friend a cordial good-by.

From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know
concerning the child.

"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur! Four nights of the seven the
poor little object is alone. The mother appears to have money enough,
she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do. She
sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when
she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from
falling off in her sleep."

Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a
lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as
the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be
replaced by any other guardian.

"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her
deviltry, and her child in her care. We are _fin de race_, if you
like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes,
but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however
bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere. You
will find it difficult to replace a mother by a _machine_ or an
_institution_, believe me."

And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in
philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism. What was
he likely to accomplish in the case of this child? Nothing more than
the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure.
"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it,
after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?"

In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help
the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he
came up against a stone wall.

"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I
don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor."

Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided
Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional
maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook
or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more _aqua pura_
than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium.

The gentleman in this particular charity was surp