y cotton
dress and ridiculous bib-apron. Babs presented a far more imposing
appearance in a white frock and pink ribbons, underneath which the bare
little brown feet were peeping. Anna would willingly have made friends
with her, but Verity advised her to wait. "Babs will not be sociable
until she has had her tea," she remarked; "we had better take no notice
of her for the present," and indeed that much-enduring and
long-suffering infant was at that moment so reduced by famine as to
attempt swallowing her own dimpled fist.

"What a capital boy she would make!" thought Anna as she followed Mrs.
Keston into the dining-room; for the dark, closely-cropped head and a
certain boyish freedom of step and bearing gave her this idea.

The dining-room was rather a gloomy apartment; the front windows were
high and narrow, and the overhanging balcony rather obscured the light;
the folding-doors had been taken away, but though this added to the
size of the room, there was no additional cheerfulness gained, as the
glass door in the inner room, which once had opened into a pleasant
garden, now merely led into a covered way to the studio.

This sombre apartment was furnished in a curious manner, which made
people open their eyes with astonishment until they found out that
Amias Keston had acquired his household goods at second-hand sales.

The table of good Spanish mahogany had been a bargain, but it hardly
harmonised with a Sheraton cabinet and a light oak sideboard, though
both were good of their kind. Then the chairs had been picked up
singly, and were of all sizes and patterns. Amias always sat in a
grandfather chair of carved dark oak at the bottom of the table, and
Verity in a high-backed chair in light oak and red morocco, while
others were rosewood, mahogany, or Sheraton. Nothing matched, nothing
harmonized; it was merely a curiosity shop in which they stored their
purchases. So there were plush curtains and Japanese screens, a bronze
Mazeppa, and an alabaster boy and butterfly, while blue dragon china
and some lovely bits of Chelsea were in a corner cupboard. Anna, who
knew there was no other living room, looked vainly round for some
feminine occupation, and Verily, who was as sharp as a needle, seemed
to guess her thought.

"Oh, I never sit here," she said confidentially, "it is too dark; Babs
and I prefer the studio," and Anna did not wonder at the preference.
The studio was a delightful room, high and well-proportioned,