sugar bowl and cream pitcher turned all the sunlight that found them into a million diamond sparkles. A half grapefruit with ice snuggled about it was at Kate’s place. Kate lifted the slender pointed spoon made just for grapefruit, and gratefully tasted the tart pulp and juice.

“Elsie might have shown you the way,” Aunt Katherine was saying. “I thought of course you would come down together.”

“I am sorry I was late. But it was fun wandering around in the house trying to find you.” And then Kate told them all about how she had felt herself in a picture.

Aunt Katherine was pleased. “Was it really like that to you, my house?” she asked.

“Oh, yes! and more so than I know how to say. Most of the windows and doors open, the glimpses of tree branches and flowers and sky, the light and shade in the rooms, all the flowers in vases in surprising places, the colours of everything, the hangings——”

Kate stopped, embarrassed by her own enthusiasm, or perhaps discomfited by Elsie’s cool gaze. But she had said more than enough to give Aunt Katherine very real and deep pleasure.

“Then I see,” she told Kate, “why you did not mind wandering about alone or our seeming inhospitality. And I think your dress, my dear, fitted into the picture. It is a very poetic dress.”

Kate flushed with pleasure. “Mother would love to hear you say that,” she said. “We made it out of the new chintz curtains in her bedroom. You see I had to have some dresses, and there were the curtains. Mother thought——”

But at mention of her mother Kate saw in morning light what she had failed to see last night in lamplight: the deepening of pain lines around Aunt Katherine’s eyes and mouth, a cloud of pain somehow in her face. So she broke off her account of Katherine’s ingenuity.

“I’m glad you like it,” she finished lamely.

“I have brought you the key to the orchard house,” Aunt Katherine said, as though it were a matter she would like to be done with quickly. “Elsie will show you all over it and around it. Then I have an errand at the post office I wish you girls would do for me. I have a very busy morning ahead. The car is at your disposal this morning, and I should think you would take a good long ride. It is really too warm to do anything more energetic. At least, it promises to be a very warm day.”

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