tor's taste,
however, had not run entirely to patriotic subjects, for scattered
along the walls, where shelves sagged with their burden of oilcans,
putty, nails and fishing tackle, were a variety of nautical
reproductions in color--a prize yacht heeling in the wind; a reach of
rough sea whose giant combers swirled about a wreck; glimpses of marsh
and dune typical of the land of the Cape dweller.

An air-tight stove, the solitary defence against cold and storm, stood
in the corner, and before its rusty hearth a rickety chair and an
overturned soap box were suggestively placed. But perhaps what told an
observer more about Willie Spence than did anything else was a bunch of
rarely beautiful sabbatia blooming in a pickle bottle and a wee black
kitten who disported herself unmolested among the tools cluttering the
deeply scarred workbench.

She was a mischievous kitten, a spoiled kitten; one who vented her
caprice on everything that had motion. Did a curl of shavings drop to
the ground, instantly Jezebel was at hand to catch it up in her
diminutive paws; toss it from her; steal up and fall upon it again; and
dragging it between her feet, roll over and over with it in a mad orgy
of delight. A shadow, a string, a flicker of metal was the signal for
a frolic. Let one's mood be austere as a monk's, with a single twist
of her absurdly tiny body this small creature shattered its gravity to
atoms. There was no such thing as dignity in Jezebel's presence.
Already three times Bob Morton had lifted the mite off the table and
three times back she had come, leaping in the path of his gleaming
plane as if its metallic whir and glimmering reflections were designed
solely for her amusement. In spite of his annoyance the man had
laughed and now, stooping, he caught up the tormentor and held her
aloft.

"You minx!" he cried, shaking the sprite gently. "What do you think I
am here for--to play with you?"

The kitten blinked at him out of her round blue eyes.

"You'll be getting your fur mittens cut off the next thing you know,"
went on Bob severely. "Scamper out of here!"

He set the little creature on the floor, aimed her toward the doorway
and gave her a stimulating push.

With a coquettish leap headlong into the sunshine darted Jezebel, only
to come suddenly into collision with a stranger who had crossed the
grass and was at that instant about to enter the workshop.

The newcomer was a girl, tall and slender, with lustrou