artfully exaggerated by the Parisian _modiste_, are liberally suggested,
as Red Umbrella gathers her frothy draperies about her hips, lifting her
multitudinous frills to reveal black and scarlet openwork silk stockings,
bedecking her plump legs and tiny feet, whose high-heeled silver-buckled
shoes are sinking in the hot, white, powdery sand.

"Please don't go on! I haven't half thanked you," she pleads, still
pressing the podgy little bejewelled paw upon the heaving corsage. Then
she sinks, with an air of graceful languor, down upon a long, prostrate
monolith of granite, that is thickly crusted with velvety orange lichen
and grey-green moss, starred with infinitesimal yellow flowers. And
Lynette, habitually courteous and rather amused, and not at all unwilling
to know a little more of the affected, slangy, overdressed little woman,
sits down upon the other end of the sprawling stone column, and says,
smiling at Baby, who is clutching at a hovering butterfly with her eager,
dimpled hands:

"Of course, it was a terrible shock to you when you missed her. She is
such a darling! Aren't you, Baby?"

Baby, her long, grey-green eyes melting and gleaming dangerously, her
golden head tilted coquettishly, and a gay, provoking laugh on the bold
red mouth, makes another snatch, captures the hovering blue butterfly,
opens the rosy hand, and with a wry face of disgust, drops the crushed
morsel over the edge of the perambulator. The superb, unconscious cruelty
of the act gives Lynette a little pang even as she goes on:

"She was not in the least shy. I think we should soon be very great
friends. May her nurse bring her to see me sometimes? Most babies love
flowers, and there is a garden full of them where I am staying. Do you
live here?"

"Live here? Gracious, no!" Red Umbrella opens the round, brown eyes that
Baby's are so unlike in shape and expression, and shrugs her pretty
shoulders as high as the big ruby buttons that blaze in her pretty ears.
"Me and Baby are only visiting--stopping with her nurse and my two maids
for a change at the Herion Arms--me having been recommended sea-air by the
doctors for tonsils in the throat. The house is advertised as an
up-to-date hotel in the ABC Railway Guide, but diggings more wretched I
never struck, and you do fetch up in some queer places on tour in the
Provinces, let alone the States," says Red Umbrella, tossing the
wistaria-wreathed hat. "Which may be a surprise to people who think it