as if we ought to offer
them the royal suite."

"If you did, they would run away. That is just what they have come here
to escape from, all the royal suites and pomp."

Even Jean was on the tiptoe of expectancy to get her first look at Madame
Ormond. While not one of the girls could have explained just exactly how
they suspected she would look, still they held a blurred picture of a
picturesque mortal set apart from ordinary home folks, who would probably
dress more or less eccentrically.

Kit was in the kitchen making scones for lunch, when a shadow fell across
the entry threshold. Doris sat on the edge of the table by the window
picking over blackberries, and the two stared fixedly at the intruder. She
was frankly over forty, a large buoyant type of woman with a mass of curly
ashen blonde hair and sparkling black eyes, the north of Italy type, with
a wonderful complexion, as Helen said later, like the skin of a yellow
peach. Perhaps it was her smile that charmed the girls mostly, though, at
that first glance. It was such a radiant smile of good fellowship when she
peered into the shadowy interior of the old kitchen.

"Good-morning, everybody. I have come for butter and eggs, and milk." She
spied the two-quart pail of berries on the table, and gave a little cry of
interest. "Where do you find those, my dear?"

Doris told her shyly that they came from the rock pasture on the hill
behind the house.

"Will you come down to the tent this afternoon and take me there? Mr.
Ormond is very, very busy working on his new opera, and I must be away and
let him write in peace, so you and I will have to follow the trails
together, yes?" She smiled down into Doris' piquant, freckled little face,
and just at this moment there came from the living-room, where Helen was
dusting, Dinorah's Shadow Song, sung in a clear, girlish soprano.

Madame Ormond laid her finger on her lips and listened, her eyes bright
with attention and interest.

"It is still another one of you?" she asked, softly, when the melody died
away. "You shall bring her down to the tent to me and let my husband try
her voice with the 'cello. It is his big baby, that 'cello, but it is very
wise; it never gives the wrong decision on a voice, and she has a very
beautiful one."

"Well," Kit declared, with a deep sigh, after the diva had gone on down
towards the road with her butter, eggs and milk, "we've always believed we
were an exceptional family. In fact Mrs. Go