; "and don't tell
me any more naughty stories about the duchess. No! That is the thin
bread-and-butter. I told you you would lose your bearings. The toast is
in a warm plate on your right. Now let us make believe I am Miss
Champion, and hand it to me, as nicely as you will be handing it to
her, this time to-morrow."

"It is easy to make believe you are Jane, with that voice," said Garth;
"and yet--I don't know. I have never really associated you with her.
One little sentence of old Rob's made all the difference to me. He said
you had fluffy floss-silk sort of hair. No one could ever imagine Jane
with fluffy floss-silk sort of hair! And I believe that one sentence
saved the situation. Otherwise, your voice would have driven me mad,
those first days. As it was, I used to wonder sometimes if I could
possibly bear it. You understand why, now; don't you? And yet, in a
way, it is NOT like hers. Hers is deeper; and she often speaks with a
delicious kind of drawl, and uses heaps of slang; and you are such a
very proper little person; and possess what the primers call 'perfectly
correct diction.' What fun it would be to hear you and Jane talk
together! And yet--I don't know. I should be on thorns, all the time."

"Why?"

"I should be so awfully afraid lest you should not like one another.
You see, YOU have really, in a way, been more to me than any one else
in the world; and SHE--well, she IS my world," said Garth, simply. "And
I should be so afraid lest she should not fully appreciate you; and you
should not quite understand her. She has a sort of way of standing and
looking people up and down, and, women hate it; especially pretty
fluffy little women. They feel she spots all the things that come off."

"Nothing of mine comes off," murmured Nurse Rosemary, "excepting my
patient, when he will not stay on his chair."

"Once," continued Garth, with the gleeful enjoyment in his voice which
always presaged a story in which Jane figured, "there was a fearfully
silly little woman staying at Overdene, when a lot of us were there. We
never could make out why she was included in one of the duchess's 'best
parties,' except that the dear duchess vastly enjoyed taking her off,
and telling stories about her; and we could not appreciate the
cleverness of the impersonation, unless we had seen the original. She
was rather pretty, in a fussy, curling-tongs, wax-doll sort of way; but
she never could let her appearance alone, or allow people