forge, fell shyly on her milky neck and
shoulders, and shone in her sparkling eyes, as she stood before her
largest mirror--the long glazed door of a kitchen clock which she had
placed upon her chest of drawers. Had poor Minty been content with the
full, free, and goddess-like outlines that it reflected, she would have
been spared her impending disappointment. For, alas! the dress of her
model had been framed upon a symmetrically attenuated French corset, and
the unfortunate Minty's fuller and ampler curves had under her simple
country stays known no more restraining cincture than knew the Venus
of Milo. The alteration was a hideous failure, it was neither Minty's
statuesque outline nor Louise Macy's graceful contour. Minty was no
fool, and the revelation of this slow education of the figure and
training of outline--whether fair or false in art--struck her quick
intelligence with all its full and hopeless significance. A bitter light
sprang to her eyes; she tore the wretched sham from her shoulders, and
then wrapping a shawl around her, threw herself heavily and sullenly on
the bed. But inaction was not a characteristic of Minty's emotion; she
presently rose again, and, taking an old work-box from her trunk, began
to rummage in its recesses. It was an old shell-incrusted affair, and
the apparent receptacle of such cheap odds and ends of jewelry as she
possessed; a hideous cameo ring, the property of the late Mrs. Sharpe,
was missing. She again rapidly explored the contents of the box, and
then an inspiration seized her, and she darted into her brother's
bedroom.

That precocious and gallant Lovelace of ten, despite all sentiment, had
basely succumbed to the gross materialism of youthful slumber. On a
cot in the corner, half hidden under the wreck of his own careless and
hurried disrobing, with one arm hanging out of the coverlid, Richelieu
lay supremely unconscious. On the forefinger of his small but dirty hand
the missing cameo was still glittering guiltily. With a swift movement
of indignation Minty rushed with uplifted palm towards the tempting
expanse of youthful cheek that lay invitingly exposed upon the pillow.
Then she stopped suddenly.

She had seen him lying thus a hundred times before. On the pillow near
him an indistinguishable mass of golden fur--the helpless bulk of a
squirrel chained to the leg of his cot; at his feet a wall-eyed cat, who
had followed his tyrannous caprices with the long-suffering devotio