mported from America on
purpose to play gooseberry. You know--or perhaps you don't--I tried my
new play for the first time in Dundee, just one night, and it went
gorgeously. This house of his isn't far off, and I was motored back and
forth for rehearsals and so on, while the company stayed in town. I
simply fell in love with the place; and he's trying to buy it--to please
me, I _hope_. There's a round porter's lodge and a round garage: and the
round house stands on a round lawn with a round road running round it
like a belt, so that it all seems the centre of a round world with the
sun moving round it. He brought me from there to Edinburgh to-day, and
two of my maids in another car. He won't stop here in the same hotel
with me, of course, but he'll drop in now and then--naturally--and he's
taken his box at the theatre for the whole week. We must arrange this
sister business before he calls. I've confessed to him that I'm
twenty-nine, and it's perfectly true. I've been twenty-nine for several
years. But he'd hardly believe me so old. And what _should_ I do--I ask
you all--if a grown-up--oh, but an extremely grown-up--daughter suddenly
loomed over my horizon? Even if I put back her clock to fifteen instead
of--never mind!--I couldn't manage to be less than thirty-one, and that
with the greatest difficulty. Now you see how I am placed."

"Shall I go away and--and save you all the bother?" asked Barrie, in a
very small voice.

"Oh, no, no, dear child; nothing of the sort, of course," protested Mrs.
Bal, patting the hands which Barrie held tightly clasped together in her
lap. "You mustn't be naughty and misunderstand. I don't want to lose you
like that, now you've taken all the trouble to find me--with the help of
our good Somerled. But--will you be a sister to me?--as popular men have
to say in Leap Year."

"I'll do whatever you want me to do," Barrie answered in the same little
voice, like that of a chidden child. "Am I--would you like me to stay
with you here, or----"

"Why, I suppose"--Mrs. Bal showed that she was startled--"I suppose we
must fix up a place for you--for a few days. But I don't see how you can
go with me on tour. It wouldn't be good for you at all. The best way is
for us to have a nice little visit together, and get acquainted with
each other, and then perhaps I'd better send you to--er--to my flat in
London, or--to boarding-school, or somewhere. I _quite_ understand you
wouldn't go back to your grand