arbor. Miss Camilla's yellow cats
were of a famous breed, well represented in the village; but she had
these four, which were marvels of beauty.

Another hour wore on. Miss Camilla still wrote, and Lucina and the
yellow cats slept. Then it was four o'clock, and time for the
entertainment to which Lucina had looked forward.

There was a heavy footstep on the garden walk and a rustling among
the box borders. Then old 'Liza loomed up in the arbor door,
darkening out the light. Little Lucina stirred and woke, yet did not
know she woke, not knowing she had slept. To her thinking she had sat
all this time with her eyes wide open, and the sight of her aunt
Camilla writing and the leaf shadows on the arbor floor had never
left them. She saw the yellow cats with some surprise, but cats can
steal in quietly when one's eyes are turned. Had Lucina dreamed she
had fallen asleep when an honored guest of her lady aunt, she would
have been ready to sink with shame. Blindness to one's innocent
shortcomings seems sometimes a special mercy of Providence.

Lucina straightened herself with a flushed smile, gave just one
glance at the great tray which old 'Liza bore before her; then looked
away again, being fully alive to the sense that it is not polite nor
ladylike to act as if you thought much of your eating and drinking.

Old 'Liza set the tray on a little table in the midst of the arbor,
and immediately odors, at once dainty and delicate, spicy, fruity,
and aromatically soothing, diffused themselves about. The four yellow
cats stirred; they yawned, and stretched luxuriously; then, suddenly
fully awake to the meaning of those savory scents which had disturbed
their slumbers, sat upright with eager jewel eyes upon the tray.

"Take the cats away, 'Liza," said Miss Camilla.

Old 'Liza advanced grinning upon the cats, gathered them up, two
under each arm, and bore them away, moving out of sight between the
box borders like some queer monster, with her wide humping flanks of
black bombazine enhanced by four angrily waving yellow cat tails,
which gave an effect of grotesque wrath to the retreat.

Lucina looked, in spite of her manners, at the tray when it was on
the table before her very face and eyes. It was covered with a napkin
of finest damask, whose flower pattern glistened like frostwork, and
upon it were ranged little cups and saucers of pink china as thin and
transparent as shells, a pink sugar-bowl to match, a small silver
tea