At this crucial moment entered Elizabeth, flushed and bright-eyed from a final encounter with the elemental forces in the kitchen. "Won't you all come out to dinner," she said prettily; "I'm sure you must have concluded that dining was among the lost arts by this time."

"Not in this house," said Mr. Hickey gallantly. "This is one of the few—the very few places where one has the inestimable privilege of really dining. The balance of the time I merely take food from a strict sense of duty."

"We're going to have ice-cream," whispered Carroll kindly.

His father, who had caught the whisper, laughed outright. "He wants to give you something to look forward to, George," he said, as he tried the edge of his carving-knife. "If variety is the spice of life anticipation might be said to be its sweetening—eh? Will you have your beef rare or well-done, Miss Tripp?"

"Well-done, if you please," murmured Miss Tripp, smiling happily as she squeezed Doris' chubby hand under the table-cloth.

The little girl's eyes were very bright as she[Pg 83] said, "I like to have you a-visitin', Aunty Evelyn."

[Pg 83]

"Do you, dear? Well Aunty Evelyn is very, very happy to be here."

"We were going to have rice-pudding for dessert if you hadn't come. I don't like rice-pudding; do you, Aunty Evelyn?"

"Doris—dear!"

Her mother's voice held reproof and warning; but the child with the specious sense of security inspired by the presence of strangers displayed her dimples demurely. "I didn't know it was naughty not to like rice-pudding," she said, in a small distinct voice.

Mr. Hickey glanced thoughtfully across the table at Miss Tripp, who was smiling down at the little girl encouragingly. "Most of us are naughty when it comes to hankering after the unusual and the unattainable," he observed didactically. "I eat my rice-pudding contentedly enough most days of the year; but on the three hundred and sixty-fifth I——"

"You pine for pink ice-cream; don't you?" smiled Miss Tripp; "but one might tire of even the pinkest ice-cream, if it appeared too often. What one really wants is—plain[Pg 84] bread." She cast a barely perceptible glance at Elizabeth, the laces at her throat quivering with the ghost of a sigh. The next instant she was laughing at Richard whose curly head 

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