the front
ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three
times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes
and trickled down the white face.

"Hello, kiddie! You're crying!" said Jan Cuxson, who like his father
had a positive mania for protecting and helping those in trouble, which
mania got him into an infinite and varied amount of trouble himself,
and led him into unexpected boles and corners of the earth. "I'm--I'm
not crying weally!" choked Leonie, "it's--it's my kitten!"

"Oh! do stop, Leonie!" said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child's
hand and pull her to her feet. "She's coming to stay with you," she
added, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chin
which comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched the
puppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot in a corner.

"That's jolly," said the young man.

"Oh! she's coming as a case. She walks a good deal in her sleep, and
as my brother-in-law, Colonel Hetth, if you remember, was such a----"

But Jan Cuxson was not listening.

He too had put his hand on the curly head and tilted it back gently so
that the light shone into the sorrow-laden eyes encircled by shadows.

Then he smiled suddenly down at the mite, and she, perceiving that a
ray of light had suddenly pierced the all-pervading gloom, smiled back,
and catching his left hand in both of hers pressed it to her forehead.

"Good Lord!" he muttered, as a thrill ran through him at the unexpected
and oriental action.

And Fate, plucking in senile fashion at the loose ends which lay
nearest her old hand, knotted two tightly together with a bit of rare
golden strand she kept tucked away in her bodice.

"And what shall we do when you come? Can you ride? I know of a lovely
pony a little boy rides!"

Leonie shook her head mournfully, feeling unconsciously but acutely the
penalty of her sex for the first time in her life.

"I can't wide astwide," she sighed, "I haven't any bweeches. Jill and
Maudie Wetherbourne always wide in skirts. But I can swim," she added
quickly, "an' jump in out of my depff. I learnt in the baff at the
seaside!"

"Oh! come along, child, _do_!" broke in her aunt to her own undoing.

"Auntie jumps in too, though she says she doesn't," proceeded Leonie in
a gallant effort to shore up her family's sporting reputation.

"I do _not_, Leonie! I can't imagine how you ever got such an idea
into your head