requisite qualities to help him out of his difficulty. The Duchess was
already acquainted with every visitor of note, and would not care to be
introduced to insignificant nonentities.

Stay, though! What of the most insignificant of his guests? What of
Pixie O'Shaughnessy, of the ready tongue, and the audacious self-
confidence, which would flourish unchecked in the presence of kings and
emperors? "Pixie for ever! Pixie to the rescue!" cried Geoffrey to
himself, and promptly stole across to the room set apart for
refreshments, where his small sister-in-law sat eating her fourth ice,
waited upon with assiduous care by her friend Montgomery.

"Pixie," he said, "there's an old lady in black sitting under the big
palm in the yellow drawing-room and looking dreadfully bored! Just go
and talk to her like a good girl, and see if you can amuse her a little
bit before she goes."

"I will so!" responded Pixie heartily. "It's a very dull party when
there's nothing to do but be pleasant. I was bored myself, before I
began to eat. I'll leave the ice now, but maybe I'll venture on another
by and by.--In black, you said, under the palm?"

She flicked a lapful of crumbs on to the floor, and pranced away with
her light, dancing step. Geoffrey watched her from the doorway, saw her
squeeze herself into the corner of the lounge on which the Duchess was
seated, and gaze into her face with the broadest of broad beaming
smiles, while the great lady, in her turn, put up a lorgnon and stared
back in amazed curiosity.

"Well, little girl," said the Duchess, smiling, "and what have you got
to say?"

"Plenty, thank you! I always have. Me difficulty is to find someone to
listen!" replied Miss Pixie, with a confidential nod.

The old lady looked extraordinarily thin; the lines on her face crossed
and re-crossed like the most intricate puzzle, her lips were sunken, and
the tips of nose and chin were at perilously close quarters, but her
eyes were young still, such sharp, bright little eyes, and they twinkled
just as Pat's did when he was pleased.

"Talk to me, then. I'll stop you when I'm bored!" she said, and at that
Pixie nodded once again.

"Of course. We always do. Jack stamps on me foot, and Pat snores, the
same as if he were asleep. He says he is strong enough to hear a tale
six times over, but he won't listen to it a seventh, to please man nor
woman. Bridgie says jokes are one of the trials of family life, because