ion to
frighten the giant off.

"Good dog!" cheered Tom and leaned back laughing, "Well done!"

* * * * *

Because it was very late when Dr. Bewick left the ladies to return to
his hotel they immediately repaired to their respective rooms; but
before Estelle had got to bed, Aurora, half undressed, came strolling
into her maidenly bower of temperate green and white.

A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps,
from the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the
instinct to make herself feel better by talking it off.

She dropped on a chair, and in silence continued to braid her hair for
the night.

"Isn't he the nicest fellow!" began Estelle, setting the keynote for
joyous confidences.

"Isn't he just!" replied Aurora. "I want him to have the best time in
the three weeks he's going to spend here. We've got to show him all the
beauties of Florence, and then I want him to know all our friends. We
must have some tea-parties and some dinners. I want it to be just as
gay. Who is there I ought to lay myself out for, if not Tom Bewick?"

"I quite agree with you. Let's plan."

"No, to-morrow'll do. It's too late. I'm tired." The motions of Aurora's
fingers were suspended among the strands of her hair. She fell into a
muse. "Seeing Tom"--she came out of it again, and went on braiding--"has
brought back, along with some things I never want to forget, such a lot
of things I don't want to think of!"

"I suppose it would."

"His sisters, for instance. He doesn't look a bit like them,
really--nasty bugs, godless, gutless pigs--but yet he brings them up
before me. Idell rather more than Cora, and Idell was the meanest of the
two, and her husband the miserablest, sneakingest cuss. Oh, how I hate
the bunch of them! And I oughtn't, you know. You oughtn't to go on
hating your enemies after you've got the better of them. But the moment
I think of that trio, Cora Bewick--sour-bellied old maid!--and Idell
Friebus, and her rotten little pea-green husband--pin-headed insect!
flap-eared fool!--I get mad. If you could really know, Hat, the
cold-heartedness and wicked-mindedness of those people! How they ever
happened in Tom's family Goodness only knows. And such a fine father!
The Judge was as good as any of those old fellows in the Bible, I do
believe. _That_ patient, _that_ considerate, and _that_
just! More than just; what he did was more than j