"What is it, then?"

"It isn't that, or the 'tato being lost, it was only crumbs afterwards; but, Mr. Bishop, I hadn't done nothing."

Regie looked into the kind keen eyes, and his own little red ones filled again with tears.

"I had not done nothing," he repeated. "And I'd kept my 'tato for her. It's that—that—I don't mind about my arm. I'm Christian soldiers about my arm; but it's that—that—"

"That hurts you in your heart," said the Bishop, putting his arm round him.

"Yes," said Regie, producing a tight little ball that had once been a handkerchief. "Auntie Hester and I were such friends. I told her all my secrets, and she told me hers. I knew long before, when she gave father the silver cream-jug, and about Fräulein's muff. If it was a mistake, like father treading on my foot at the school-feast, I should not mind, but she did it on purpose."

The Bishop's brow contracted. Time was ebbing away, ebbing away like a life. Yet Dr. Brown's warning remained in his ears. "If the child is frightened of her, and screams when he sees her, I won't answer for the consequences."

"Is that your little dog?" he said, after a moment's thought.

"Yes, that is Boulou."

"Was he ever in a trap?" asked the Bishop, with a vague recollection of the ways of clergymen's dogs, those "little rifts within the lute," which so often break the harmony between a sporting squire and his clergyman.

"He was once. Mr. Pratt says he hunts, but father says not, that he could not catch anything if he tried."

"I had a dog once," said the Bishop, "called Jock. And he got in a trap like Boulou did. Now, Jock loved me. He cared for me more than anybody in the world. Yet, as I was letting him out of the trap, he bit me. Do you know why he did that?"

"Why?"

"Because the trap hurt him so dreadfully that he could not help biting something. He did not really mean it. He licked me afterwards. Now, Auntie Hester was like Jock. She was in dreadful, dreadful pain like a trap, and she hit you like Jock bit me. But Jock loved me best in the world all the time. And Auntie Hester loves you, and is your friend she tells secrets to, all the time."

"Mother says she does not love me really. It was only pretence." Regie's voice shook. "Mother says she must never come back, because it might be baby next. She said so to father."

"Mother has made a mistake. I'm so old that I know better even than mother. Auntie Hester loves you, and can't eat any breakfast till you tell her you don't mind. Will you come with me and kiss her, and tell her so? And we'll make up a new secret on the way."

"Yes," said Regie, eagerly, his wan little face turning pink. "But mother?" he said, stopping short.