and history!"

"I should _think_ so!" he cried with fervour. "Mr. Grey knows it,
too...."

Harold Grey blushed. Belinda laughed delightedly. Sophy rose and took
Bobby by the hand. She was laughing, too, but quite firm.

"Come, Bobby," she said. "You can see your Cousin Belinda as much as you
like to-morrow."

Bobby, thus admonished, resisted no longer. He made his most formal bow
to the company and marched off with his tutor. Belinda rather resented
being thus deprived of her youthful admirer.

She looked smilingly at Sophy.

"My! but you've got him in good training, haven't you?" she said lazily.
"Have you got Morry trained like that, too?"

Mrs. Horton made a nervous movement.

Sophy took it tranquilly.

"You must judge for yourself," she replied, also smiling. To herself she
said: "This girl has a vulgar mind ... and I'm afraid she's taken a
dislike to me."

Loring entered a moment later. He, too, blinked when he saw Belinda. It
was not so much her beauty that made him blink as her full-fledged
"young-ladyhood." He had not realised that the tucking up of her
brilliant mane and the letting down of her skirts would produce so
complete a transformation.

He came forward rather consciously, kissed his aunt perfunctorily, and
said:

"Hello, Linda!"

"Hello, Morry!" she returned, lying back in her armchair and looking
serenely up at him. But into her lazy eyes there had come a glint of
garnet. The talk was general for a few moments. Then Loring said that he
wanted a cup of tea. He rang, and Biggs brought fresh tea-things.

"I'll make it for you," said Belinda. She glanced at Sophy. "If _you_
don't mind?" she said.

"Of course not. Thanks!" said Sophy.

Belinda busied herself with the tea service. She had well-shaped, very
white, very deft hands. The White Cat in the fairy tale must have had
hands like Belinda's--just so velvety and agile.

Morris watched them curiously. It was odd--but Belinda's hands had
"grown up," too. He remembered them tanned and scratched--regular
"paws." Now they were white-cat paws, soft as velvet even to look at.

"How funny!" he said suddenly.

Belinda lifted an eyebrow.

"What's 'funny'?"

"Your sitting there so demurely making tea for me."

"Why shouldn't I sit demurely and make tea for you?"

"Oh, I don't know! You see ... I remember you shinning up trees and ...
and that sort of thing."

This speech rather halted at the end.

Belinda thought correctly that t