A faint smile like a sneer came on the man’s face. “Nay, yo’ mun ax ’er,” he replied callously, in broad vernacular.

Connie felt as if he had hit her in the face, and she changed colour. Then she gathered her defiance, and looked at him, her dark-blue eyes blazing rather vaguely.

“I asked you ,” she panted.

He gave a queer little bow, lifting his hat. “You did, your Ladyship,” he said; then, with a return to the vernacular: “but I canna tell yer.” And he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance.

Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black-haired thing of nine or ten. “What is it, dear? Tell me why you’re crying!” she said, with the conventionalised sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, self-conscious. Still more sweetness on Connie’s part.