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 proper to a dauntless spirit; and as she swept and dusted the rooms in her care, she sang softly the songs of the country child.

It was half-past eight; she was cooking the breakfast of the Honorable John Ruffin, when there came a knock at his oak, as the outer door of a set of chambers is inexplicably called, seeing that it is so often made of pitch-pine. She peered cautiously through the slit of the letter-box, as she had been carefully instructed to do lest she should open the oak to the seedy dun. She saw, standing without, a stout gentleman of a rich Assyrian air, wearing a very shiny silk hat: a well-to-do figure, reassuring to her childish mind; and she opened the oak.

"I want to see Mr. Ruffin," said the stout gentleman sharply. There was a touch of hostility in his tone, and Pollyooly's quick ear caught it: "You can't see him. He's not had breakfast; it's no use bothering him before breakfast," she said quickly.

"Rats," said the stout gentleman shortly; and he pushed rudely past her, went along the passage to the sitting-room, and, without knocking, entered it. The sitting-room was empty of human occupant,