"We're going to have ice-cream for dessert, and——"

"Oh-e-e!" in a rapturous chorus from all the children.

"I don't want you to make that noise when Celia brings it in to the table; that's why I'm telling you beforehand."

Richard was pirouetting heavily on his little stubbed shoes. "Oh-e-e!" he repeated, "ice-cweam!"

"Now, do you think you can remember?" asked Elizabeth, clasping a string of gold beads about her pretty throat, and turning to meet the three pairs of upturned eyes. "I want Aunty Evelyn to think you've improved a great deal since the last time she was here. You weren't very good that time."

Carroll's clear gaze met his mother's reprovingly. "Do you want Aunty Evelyn to think we've improved, if we haven't?" he asked. "Because we're really getting badder most every day."

"You're badder, you mean," said Doris, with[Pg 72] a superior and pitying smile; "I'm as good 's I can be. Mrs. Van Duser said I was a very inter-est-in' 'zample of a child. So there!"

[Pg 72]

Carroll shook his head. "I'm not going to quarrel with you, Doris, 'cause I promised mother I wouldn't," he said with dignity; "but we are badder—'specially you; you didn't mind mother three times to-day."

"I am not badder."

"I said I wouldn't quarrel, Doris; but you are—very much badder."

"Hush, children!" exclaimed Elizabeth, hurriedly intervening between the militant pair. "Come right down stairs, and don't talk to each other at all unless you can be pleasant and polite."

Miss Evelyn Tripp presently appeared in a wonderful toilet, all lace and twinkling jets. She exclaimed over Carroll's marvellous gain in inches, and Doris' brilliant colour, and kissed and cooed over Richard.

"They're certainly the dearest children in the world," she said. "I've been simply wild to see them all these months, and you, too, Betty dear! I've so much to tell you!"

She twined her arm caressingly about Doris,[Pg 73] and smiled brilliantly down at the little girl, who gazed with round appreciative eyes at the visitor's gown and at the jewels which sparkled on her small white hands.

[Pg 73]

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