ly inclined, and nothing
pleased them better than to lift their voices in unison. Besides, it
always distressed Kit-Ki, and they never tired laughing to see the
unhappy cat retreat before the first minor chord struck on the piano.
More than that, the dogs always protested, noses pointed heavenward. It
meant noise, which was always welcome in any form.

"Will you play, Miss Erroll?" inquired Selwyn.

Miss Erroll would play.

"Why do you always call her 'Miss Erroll'?" asked Billy. "Why don't you
say 'Eileen'?"

Selwyn laughed. "I don't know, Billy; ask her; perhaps she knows."

Eileen laughed, too, delicately embarrassed and aware of his teasing
smile. But Drina, always impressed by formality, said: "Uncle Philip
isn't Eileen's uncle. People who are not relations say _Miss and Mrs_."

"Are faver and muvver relations?" asked Josephine timidly.

"Y-es--no!--I don't know," admitted Drina; "_are_ they, Eileen?"

"Why, yes--that is--that is to say--" And turning to Selwyn: "What
dreadful questions. _Are_ they relations, Captain Selwyn? Of course they
are!"

"They were not before they were married," he said, laughing.

"If you married Eileen," began Billy, "you'd call her Eileen, I
suppose."

"Certainly," said Selwyn.

"Why don't you?"

"That is another thing you must ask her, my son."

"Well, then, Eileen--"

But Miss Erroll was already seated at the nursery piano, and his demands
were drowned in a decisive chord which brought the children clustering
around her, while their nurses ran among them untying bibs and scrubbing
faces and fingers in fresh water.

They sang like seraphs, grouped around the piano, fingers linked behind
their backs. First it was "The Vicar of Bray." Then--and the cat fled at
the first chord--"Lochleven Castle":

"Put off, put off,
And row with speed
For now is the time and the hour of need."

Miss Erroll sang, too; her voice leading--a charmingly trained, but
childlike voice, of no pretensions, as fresh and unspoiled as the girl
herself.

There was an interval after "Castles in the Air"; Eileen sat, with her
marvellously white hands resting on the keys, awaiting further
suggestion.

"Sing that funny song, Uncle Philip!" pleaded Billy; "you know--the one
about:

"She hit him with a shingle
Which made his breeches tingle
Because he pinched his little baby brother;
And he ran down the lane
With his pants full of pain.
Oh