it,
she won't."

"Oh, I don't know about the year round. Do you, Mrs. Pasmer?"

"I should," said Alice, with the suddenness of youth, breaking into the
talk which she had not been supposed to take any interest in.

"Is it proper to kiss a young lady's hand?" said Trevor gratefully,
appealing to Mrs. Brinkley.

"It isn't very customary in the nineteenth century," said Mrs. Brinkley.
"But you might kiss her fan. He might kiss her fan, mightn't he, Mrs.
Pasmer?"

"Certainly. Alice, hold out your fan instantly."

The girl humoured the joke, laughing.

Trevor pressed his lips to the perfumed sticks. "I will tell Mrs.
Trevor," he said, "and that will decide her."

"It will decide her not to come here at all next year if you tell her
all."

"He never tells me all," said Mrs. Trevor, catching so much of the talk
as she came in from some hospitable cares in the dining-room. "They're
incapable of it. What has he been doing now?"

"Nothing. Or I will tell you when we are alone, Mrs. Trevor," said Mrs.
Brinkley, with burlesque sympathy. "We oughtn't to have a scene on both
sides of the foot-lights."

A boyish face, all excitement, was thrust out between the curtains
forming the proscenium of the little theatre. "All ready, Mrs. Trevor?"

"Yes, all ready, Jim."

He dashed the curtains apart, and marred the effect of his own
disappearance from the scene by tripping over the long legs of Jove,
stretched out to the front, where he sat on Mrs. Trevor's richest rug,
propped with sofa cushions on either hand.

"So perish all the impious race of titans, enemies of the gods!" said
Mavering solemnly, as the boy fell sprawling. "Pick the earth-born giant
up, Vulcan, my son."

The boy was very small for his age; every one saw that the accident had
not been premeditated, and when Vulcan appeared, with an exaggerated
limp, and carried the boy off, a burst of laughter went up from the
company.

It did not matter what the play was to have been after that; it all
turned upon the accident. Juno came on, and began to reproach Jupiter
for his carelessness. "I've sent Mercury upstairs for the aynica; but
he says it's no use: that boy won't be able to pass ball for a week.
How often have I told you not to sit with your feet out that way! I knew
you'd hurt somebody."

"I didn't have my feet out," retorted Jupiter. "Besides," he added, with
dignity, and a burlesque of marital special pleading which every wife
and husband recognised