occasions, while Kitty took an early opportunity of stepping to
Chrissie's side, and calling her attention to the splendours on the
table in a series of awed and breathless whispers.

"Gold spoons! Venetian glass! It breaks if you look at it! I daren't
drink a drop out of those tumblers, and I'm so thirsty! Such cream!
Such strawberries!--big as peaches, my love, and such lots of them. I
feel like the Queen of Sheba. There's no spirit left in me, it's all so
grand and gorgeous."

"I like it. It suits me! I was born to splendour!" said Chrissie, with
an air. "I call it awfully sweet of him to do the thing so well. But
what a dreadful number of knives and forks! I shall never know which to
use. I wish I had asked mother about it before we came, for I do so
detest making mistakes. Before a butler, too--so humiliating! And yet
I don't want to refuse anything I can help!"

"Don't refuse! Take all that comes, and crumble bread until you see how
other people eat it. That's my dodge when I go out to lunch with
mother. I say, how do you like the nephew? Doesn't he look ex-actly
like the tailor's advertisement that you see in the shop windows? I
have never seen any man look like that before, and want to pinch him, to
see if he is real. Do you suppose it's possible to be so handsome, and
yet as nice as if he were ugly, like Jim?"

"Jim! Jim ugly!" gasped Jim's outraged sister furiously. "Gwendoline
Maitland, you are raving! Jim is the best-looking man I know, and I'll
tell him the moment that he comes home that you said--"

"Jim won't mind. I told him so myself last year. He asked how I liked
his moustache, and I said it was `stubbly,' and he said moral worth was
better than brilliantine. There's none of your nasty pride about Jim."

Chrissie glared, but Kitty refused to be annihilated, and crinkled her
nose in sauciest defiance, whereupon her companion stared into space
with an expression of disdain. An onlooker would have concluded that a
serious quarrel had taken place; but such small interludes were of
common occurrence in the friendship of these two young women, and five
minutes later they were pinching each other in the most amicable manner,
and whispering, "Sit by me! Sit by me!" as if true happiness could not
be enjoyed apart.

During the meal which followed there was ample opportunity of "crumbling
bread," for the Vanburgh cook had received instructions to eclipse
himself for the young l