Mr. Le Frank had sold a ticket for his concert to the medical adviser of the family--one Mr. Null. A cautious guess in this direction seemed to offer the likeliest chance of success.

"He is a patron of music," the pianist began.

"He hates music," the governess interposed.

"I mean Mr. Null," Mr. Le Frank persisted.

_"I_ mean--" Miss Minerva paused (like the cat with the mouse again!)--_"I_ mean, Mr. Ovid Vere."

What form the music-master's astonishment might have assumed may be matter for speculation, it was never destined to become matter of fact. At the moment when Miss Minerva overwhelmed him with the climax of her story, a little, rosy, elderly gentleman, with a round face, a sweet smile, and a curly gray head, walked into the room, accompanied by two girls. Persons of small importance--only Mr. Gallilee and his daughters.

"How d'ye-do, Mr. Le Frank. I hope you got plenty of money by the concert. I gave away my own two tickets. You will excuse me, I'm sure. Music, I can't think why, always sends me to sleep. Here are your two pupils, Miss Minerva, safe and sound. It struck me we were rather in the way, when that sweet young creature was brought home. Sadly in want of quiet, poor thing--not in want of _us._ Mrs. Gallilee and Ovid, so clever and attentive, were just the right people in the right place. So I put on my hat--I'm always available, Mr. Le Frank; I have the great advantage of never having anything to do--and I said to the girls, 'Let's have a walk.' We had no particular place to go to--that's another advantage of mine--so we drifted about. I didn't mean it, but, somehow or other, we stopped at a pastry-cook's shop. What was the name of the pastry-cook?"

So far Mr. Gallilee proceeded, speaking in the oddest self-contradictory voice, if such a description is permissible--a voice at once high in pitch and mild in tone: in short, as Mr. Le Frank once professionally remarked, a soft falsetto. When the good gentleman paused to make his little effort of memory, his eldest daughter--aged twelve, and always ready to distinguish herself--saw her opportunity, and took the rest of the narrative into her own hands.

Miss Maria, named after her mother, was one of the successful new products of the age we live in--the conventionally-charming child (who has never been smacked); possessed of the large round eyes that we see in pictures, and the sweet manners and perfect principles that we read of in books. She called everybody "dear;" she knew to a nicety how much oxygen she wanted in the composition of her native air; and--alas, poor wretch!--she had never wetted her shoes or dirtied her face since the day when she was born.

"Dear Miss Minerva," said Maria, "the pastry-cook's name was Timbal. We have had ices."