he suddenness of the question, but did not reply
to it. Mrs. Bolling waited and David looked at her expectantly.

"My mother asked you if you liked dogs, Eleanor; didn't you
understand?"

Eleanor opened her lips as if to speak and then shut them again
firmly.

"Your protegee is slightly deaf, David," his mother assured him.

"You can tell her 'yes,'" Eleanor said unexpectedly to David. "I like
dogs, if they ain't treacherous."

"She asked you the question," David said gravely; "this is her house,
you know. It is she who deserves consideration in it."

"Why can't I talk to you about her, the way she does about me?"
Eleanor demanded. "She can have consideration if she wants it, but she
doesn't think I'm any account. Let her ask you what she wants and I'll
tell you."

"Eleanor," David remonstrated, "Eleanor, you never behaved like this
before. I don't know what's got into her, mother."

"She merely hasn't any manners. Why should she have?"

Eleanor fixed her big blue eyes on the lorgnette again.

"If it's manners to talk the way you do to your own children and
strange little girls, why, then I don't want any," she said. "I guess
I'll be going," she added abruptly and turned toward the door.

David took her by the shoulders and brought her right about face.

"Say good-by to mother," he said sternly.

"Good-by, ma'am--madam," Eleanor said and courtesied primly.

"Tell Mademoiselle to teach her a few things before the next audience,
David, and come back to me in fifteen minutes. I have something
important to talk over with you."

David stood by the open door of the blue chamber half an hour later
and watched Eleanor on her knees, repacking her suit-case. Her face
was set in pale determined lines, and she looked older and a little
sick. Outside it was blowing a September gale, and the trees were
waving desperate branches in the wind. David had thought that the
estate on the Hudson would appeal to the little girl. It had always
appealed to him so much, even though his mother's habits of migration
with the others of her flock at the different seasons had left him so
comparatively few associations with it. He had thought she would like
the broad sweeping lawns and the cherubim fountain, the apple orchard
and the kitchen garden, and the funny old bronze dog at the end of the
box hedge. When he saw how she was occupied, he understood that it was
not her intention to stay and explore these things.

"Eleanor," he