se, and I want her to come sit on the step."

"Go, then, little Mary Alexina Blair," said the lady; "he's a little
ingrate whose mother has to barter with him for every concession he
makes her." And, smiling at herself, her face alight and arch with the
animation of her smile, Charlotte Leroy sat back in the scarlet settee
and respread her draperies as a bird its plumage, touching the ribbons
at her waist and throat, resettling them with the air of one who takes
frank pleasure in their presence and becomingness. This done, she
viewed her hands, charming hands heavy with costly rings, and
finally, reassured at all points, she relaxed her buoyant figure and
looked around with smiling return to her surroundings. It was for no
party she was dressed but for her own satisfaction.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Your initials spell Mab," King William was telling Alexina as they
sat on the step; "that means you'll be rich. Mine don't spell
anything. I'm named for my grandfather up in Woodford, William
Ransome. He's dead. Father's don't either--Georges Gautier Hippolyte
Leroy. His father ran away from France because he was a Girondist, and
came to Louisville because it was French, and father's been to Paris,
too; haven't you, father?"

The gentleman thus adjured removed his cigar and addressed his wife.
"It begins to amount to garrulity. If the opposite sex produces this
at ten, what are we to expect later on?"

Mrs. Leroy's voice had a note of defence in it, as if she could not
brook even humorous criticism of the boy. It was plain where the
passionate ardour in her nature was centred.

"I'm glad, I'm glad to see it," she declared. "I was afraid it was not
in him, I was beginning to fear he was a self-sufficient little
monster."

But her son was continuing the family history. "Mother's name was
Charlotte Ransome; wasn't it, mother? When I'm a man I'm going to buy
my grandfather's stock farm back, and we'll live there; won't we,
mother?"

But the impulsive Charlotte, veering around, here took her husband's
side: "'I'm going to--I'm going to,'" she mimicked the boy, then
began to chant derisively as in words familiar to both:

"And if you don't believe me
And think I tell a lie--"

But it only gave him an idea. He was not often a host. It was going to
his head. "Wait!" he ordered, to whom it was not quite clear, and tore
into the house, to be back almost at once, bearing a beribboned
guitar.

"Now," he said, dep