inter'sting to wash Persian cats,"
Florence added, with increasing enthusiasm. "I never washed a cat in my
life."

"Neither have I," said Herbert. "I always thought they did it
themselves."

Kitty Silver sniffed. "Ain't I says so to you' Aunt Julia? She done tole
me, 'No,' she say. She say, she say Berjum cats ain't wash they self;
they got to take an' git somebody else to wash 'em!"

"If we're goin' to bathe 'em," said Florence, "we ought to know their
names, so's we can tell 'em to hold still and everything. You can't do
much with an animal unless you know their name. Did Aunt Julia tell you
these cats' names, Kitty Silver?"

"She say they name Feef an' Meemuh. Yes'm! Feef an' Meemuh! Whut kine o'
name is Feef an' Meemuh fer cat name!"

"Oh, those are lovely names!" Florence assured her, and, turning to
Herbert, explained: "She means Fifi and Mimi."

"Feef an' Meemuh," said Kitty Silver. "Them name don' suit me, an' them
long-hair cats don' suit me neither." Here she lifted the cover of the
basket a little, and gazed nervously within. "Look at there!" she said.
"Look at the way they lookin' at me! Don't you look at _me_ thataway,
you Feef an' Meemuh!" She clapped the lid down and fastened it. "Fixin'
to jump out an' grab me, was you?"

"I guess, maybe," said Florence, "maybe I better go ask Aunt Julia if I
and Herbert can't wash 'em. I guess I better go _ask_ her anyhow." And
she ran up the steps and skipped into the house by way of the kitchen. A
moment later she appeared in the open doorway of a room upstairs.

CHAPTER TWO

It was a pretty room, lightly scented with the pink geraniums and blue
lobelia and coral fuchsias that poised, urgent with colour, in the
window-boxes at the open windows. Sunshine paused delicately just
inside, where forms of pale-blue birds and lavender flowers curled up
and down the cretonne curtains; and a tempered, respectful light fell
upon a cushioned _chaise longue_; for there fluffily reclined, in
garments of tender fabric and gentle colours, the prettiest
twenty-year-old girl in that creditably supplied town.

It must be said that no stranger would have taken Florence at first
glance to be her niece, though everybody admitted that Florence's hair
was pretty. ("I'll say _that_ for her," was the family way of putting
it.). Florence did not care for her hair herself; it was dark and thick
and long, like her Aunt Julia's; but Florence--even in the realistic
presence of