ook, Billy!" she exclaimed, with cheerful tactlessness.
"They said you did, but, I declare, you look worse than I thought."

Billy's pale face reddened perceptibly.

"Nonsense! It's just that I'm so--so tired," she insisted. "I shall be
all right soon. How did you leave the children?"

"Well, and happy--'specially little Kate, because mother was going away.
Kate is mistress, you know, when I'm gone, and she takes herself very
seriously."

"Mistress! A little thing like her! Why, she can't be more than ten or
eleven," murmured Billy.

"She isn't. She was ten last month. But you'd think she was forty, the
airs she gives herself, sometimes. Oh, of course there's Nora, and the
cook, and Miss Winton, the governess, there to really manage things,
and Mother Hartwell is just around the corner; but little Kate _thinks_
she's managing, so she's happy."

Billy suppressed a smile. Billy was thinking that little Kate came
naturally by at least one of her traits.

"Really, that child is impossible, sometimes," resumed Mrs. Hartwell,
with a sigh. "You know the absurd things she was always saying two or
three years ago, when we came on to Cyril's wedding."

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, I thought she would get over it. But she doesn't. She's worse, if
anything; and sometimes her insight, or intuition, or whatever you may
call it, is positively uncanny. I never know what she's going to remark
next, when I take her anywhere; but it's safe to say, whatever it is,
it'll be unexpected and _usually_ embarrassing to somebody. And--is
that the baby?" broke off Mrs. Hartwell, as a cooing laugh and a woman's
voice came from the next room.

"Yes. The nurse has just brought him in, I think," said Billy.

"Then I'll go right now and see him," rejoined Kate, rising to her feet
and hurrying into the next room.

Left alone, Billy lay back wearily in her reclining-chair. She wondered
why Kate always tired her so. She wished she had had on her blue kimono,
then perhaps Kate would not have thought she looked so badly. Blue was
always more becoming to her than--

Billy turned her head suddenly. From the next room had come Kate's
clear-cut, decisive voice.

"Oh, no, I don't think he looks a bit like his father. That little
snubby nose was never the Henshaw nose."

Billy drew in her breath sharply, and pulled herself half erect in her
chair. From the next room came Kate's voice again, after a low murmur
from the nurse.

"Oh, but he isn't,