id, "oh! everybody be good to me."

The familiar figure of their good friend David appeared on the
threshold at this instant, and beside him an odd-looking little figure
in a shoddy cloth coat, and a faded blue tam-o'-shanter. There was a
long smudge of dirt reaching from the corner of her eye well down into
the middle of her cheek. A kind of composite gasp went up from the
waiting group, a gasp of surprise, consternation, and panic. Not one
of the five could have told at that instant what it was he expected to
see, or how his imagination of the child differed from the concrete
reality, but amazement and keen disappointment constrained them. Here
was no figure of romance and delight. No miniature Galatea half hewn
out of the block of humanity, waiting for the chisel of a composite
Pygmalion. Here was only a grubby, little unkempt child, like all
other children, but not so presentable.

"What's the matter with everybody?" said David with unnatural
sharpness. "I want to present you to our ward, Miss Eleanor Hamlin,
who has come a long way for the pleasure of meeting you. Eleanor,
these are your cooperative parents."

The child's set gaze followed his gesture obediently. David took the
little hand in his, and led the owner into the heart of the group.
Beulah stepped forward.

"This is your Aunt Beulah, Eleanor, of whom I've been telling you."

"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Aunt Beulah," the little girl
said, as Beulah put out her hand, still uncertainly.

Then the five saw a strange thing happen. The immaculate, inscrutable
David--the aristocrat of aristocrats, the one undemonstrative,
super-self-conscious member of the crowd, who had been delegated to
transport the little orphan chiefly because the errand was so
incongruous a mission on which to despatch him--David put his arm
around the neck of the child with a quick protecting gesture, and then
gathered her close in his arms, where she clung, quivering and
sobbing, the unkempt curls straggling helplessly over his shoulder.

He strode across the room where Margaret was still sitting upright in
the _chaise-lounge_, her dove-gray eyes wide, her lips parted.

"Here, you take her," he said, without ceremony, and slipped his
burden into her arms.

"Welcome to our city, Kiddo," Jimmie said in his throat, but nobody
heard him.

Peter, whose habit it was to walk up and down endlessly wherever he
felt most at home, paused in his peregrination, as Margaret sh