itation. "You get more insufferable
every day. Take the little brute with you and shut him up--or drown
him!"

Tessa came forward with an insolent shrug. There was more than a spice
of defiance in her bearing.

"I don't suppose I can catch him," she said. "But I'll try."

The chase of the elusive Scooter that followed would have been an affair
of pure pleasure to the child, had it not been for the presence of her
mother and the growing exasperation with which she regarded it. It was
all sheer fun to Scooter who wormed in and out of the furniture with
mirth in his gleaming eyes, and darted past the window a dozen times
without availing himself of that means of escape.

Netta's small stock of patience was very speedily exhausted. She sat up
on the sofa and sternly commanded Tessa to desist.

"Go and tell the _khit_ to catch him!" she said.

Tessa, however, by this time had also warmed to the game. She paid no
more attention to her mother's order than she would have paid to the
buzzing of a mosquito. And when Scooter dived under the sofa on which
Netta had been reclining, she burrowed after him with a squeal of
merriment.

It was too much for Netta whose feelings had been decidedly ruffled
before Tessa's entrance. As Scooter shot out on the other side of her,
running his queer zigzag course, she snatched the first thing that came
to hand, which chanced to be a heavy bronze weight from the
writing-table at her elbow, and hurled it at him with all her strength.

Scooter collapsed on the floor like a broken mechanical toy. Tessa
uttered a wild scream and flung herself upon him.

Netta gasped hysterically, horrified but still angry. "It serves him
right--serves you both right! Now go away!" she said.

Tessa turned on her knees on the floor. Scooter was feebly kicking in
her arms. The missile had struck him on the head and one eye was
terribly injured. She gathered him up to her little narrow chest, and he
ceased to kick and became quite still.

Over his lifeless body she looked at her mother with eyes of burning
furious hatred. "You've killed him!" she said, her voice sunk very low.
"And I hope--oh, I do hope--some day--someone--will kill you!"

There was that about her at the moment that actually frightened Netta,
and it was with undoubted relief that she saw the door open and Major
Ralston's loose-knit lounging figure block the entrance.

"What's all this noise about?" he began, and stopped short.

Behind hi