he,
Pussy?" to her sister, who is striving hard to ruin her sight by
stringing glass beads in the flickering firelight. "I wonder where he is
now!"

As Roger Dare's name has been tabooed amongst them of late, this direct
and open allusion to him falls like a thunderbolt in their midst.

Nobody says anything. Nobody does anything. Only in one dark corner,
where the light does not penetrate, one white hand closes nervously upon
another, and the owner of both draws her breath hurriedly.

Dicky Browne is the first to recover himself. He comes to the rescue
with the most praiseworthy nonchalance.

"Didn't you hear about him?" he asks the Boodie, in a tone replete with
melancholy. "He traveled too far, his hankering after savages was as
extraordinary as it was dangerous; in _his_ case it has been fatal. One
lovely morning, when the sun was shining, and all the world was alight
with smiles, they caught him. It was breakfast hour, and they were
hungry; therefore they ate him (it is their playful habit), nicely fried
in tomato sauce."

At this doleful tale, Jacky, who is lying about in some other corner,
explodes merrily, Pussy following suit; but the Boodie, who is plainly
annoyed at this frivolous allusion to her favorite, maintains her
gravity and her dignity at the same time.

"Nobody would eat Roger," she says.

"Why not? Like 'the boy, Billie,' he is still 'young and tender.'"

"Nobody would be unkind to Roger," persists the Boodie, unmoved. "And
besides, when he was going away he told me he would be back on New
Year's Day, and Roger never told a lie."

"'He will return, I know him well,'" quotes Mr. Browne.

This quotation is thrown away upon the Boodie.

"Yes, he will," she says, in all good faith. "He will be here, I _know_,
to-morrow week. I am going to keep the present I have for him, until
then. I'm afraid I won't be able to keep it any longer," says the
Boodie, regretfully, "because--"

She hesitates.

"Because it wouldn't let you. I know what it is, it is chocolate
creams," says Dicky Browne, making this unlucky speech triumphantly.

It is too much! The bare mention of these sweetmeats, fraught as they
are to her with bitterest memories, awake a long slumbering grief within
Dulce's breast. Fretted by her interview with Stephen; sore at heart
because of the child's persistent allusion to her absent cousin, this
last stab, this mention of the curious cause of their parting, quite
overcomes her.

P