esult of trying to equal a boy cousin on the trapeze when she was nine
years old. Her great, rich, challenging red-brown eyes, and her defiant
yet sweet-tempered mouth, the up-curve of her round chin, the tilt of
her nose, the way her head sat on her shoulders as though some
artist-god had flung it there with careless mastery, like a flower--her
lovely, long, still-growing body which had never known the "awkward
age"--all these things made even the most collected gasp a little when
Belinda first rushed upon their sight.

She now dropped upon the steps, near Mrs. Loring, pushed the sleeves of
her blouse still higher on her cream-white arms, and flourishing the
racquet at her step-mother, said in the rich, throaty voice of a pigeon
in the sun:

"What do I _look_ as if I'd been doing? Playing the organ?"

"Linda! _Don't_ talk in that slangy way."

Belinda showed her teeth, beautifully white if a trifle too large, in
the frankest grin.

"'Playing the organ' isn't slang, Mater."

Mrs. Horton returned her look severely.

"It's the way you say things that make them sound like slang--isn't it,
Grace?" she ended, appealing to her sister.

Mrs. Loring smiled very kindly.

"It's the fashion to be slangy nowadays, Eleanor."

Belinda's eyes shot garnet sparkles at her mother. She patted Mrs.
Loring's blue batiste skirt approvingly with her racquet.

"That's one for you, Mater!" she cried joyously, then to Mrs. Loring,
"You're always perfectly bully to me, Aunty Grace!"

The idea of applying the term "bully" to that over-refined, softly
majestic figure in its cane chair would have abashed any one less daring
than Belinda. But Mrs. Loring seemed not to mind in the least. She knew
that Belinda was "bad form." Belinda knew it herself. "Some people are
born 'bad form,'" she used to say with her wide, lovely grin. "That's
me."

In tapping her aunt's skirt with her racquet, she had dislodged Morris's
letter. It slipped to the floor beside her, and lifting it to hand it
back, she recognised his writing.

"Hullo!" she cried. "What's Morry writing such a screed about? He hates
writing long letters like the devil."

"_Belinda!_" from Mrs. Horton.

"All right, Mater--not till next time."

Then she turned again to her aunt, frankly curious.

"What _is_ he writing about, Aunt Grace? Not in a scrape, I hope--the
admirable Morry!"

"He wrote to announce his engagement, Belinda," said Mrs. Loring.

Belinda sat stock still f