lifting his
tiny arm to the position of his cousin's.

"Immense, Gardiner!" Fairfax complimented, "immense."

"Feel mine," cried Bella, and the sculptor touched between his fingers
the fine little member.

"Great, little cousin!"

"I'll be the gladiator's wife and applaud him from the Coliseum and
throw flowers on him."

Fairfax lingered with them another hour, laughing at his simplicity in
finding them such companions. With compunction, he endeavoured to take
up his lesson again with Bella, unwilling and recalcitrant. She drew a
few half-hearted circles, a page of wobbly lines, and at the suspicion
of tears Fairfax desisted, surprised to find how the idea of tears from
her touched him. Then in the window between them, he watched as the
children told him they always did, for "mother's car to come home."

"She is sharping," exclaimed Gardiner, slowly; "she has to sharp very
hard, my mother does. She comes back in the cars, only she never comes,"
he finished with patient fatality.

"Silly," exclaimed his sister, "she always comes at dinner-time. And we
bet on the cars, Cousin Antony. Now let's say it will be the
seventy-first. We have to put it far away off," she explained, "'cause
we're beginning early."

Fairfax left them, touched by their patience in watching for the mother
bird. He promised to return soon, soon, to go on with his wonderful
tales. As he went downstairs Bella called after him.

"But you didn't say _which_ car you bet on, Cousin Antony."

And Fairfax called back in his Southern drawl: "I reckon she'll come in
a pumpkin chariot." And he heard their delighted giggles as he limped
downstairs.

CHAPTER IX

He avoided his uncle, Mr. Carew, and made up his mind that if the master
of the house were brusque to him, he would not return, were the
threshold worn never so dear by little feet. Bella had the loveliest
little feet a fellow connoisseur of plastic beauty could wish to see,
could wish to watch twinkle in run-down slippers, in scuffled boots--in
boots where a button or two was always lacking--and once when she kicked
off her strap slipper at a lesson Fairfax saw, through a hole in the
stocking, one small perfect toe--a toe of Greek marble perfection, a
most charming, snowy, rosy bit of flesh, and he imagined how adorable
the little foot must be.

To an audience, composed of a dreamy boy and an ardent, enthusiastic
little girl, Fairfax confessed his talent, spoke of his hopes, of h