tch what
happens. I reckon you're not afraid, honey?"

Gardiner kicked his foot out from under the rugs. "Do mine."

With the first timidity Antony had seen her display, Bella divested
herself of her shoe and drew off her dark stocking, and held him out the
little naked foot, a charming, graceful concession to art.

"It's clean," she said simply.

He took it in his big hand and it lay like a pearl and coral thing in
his palm. Bella did not hear his murmured artistic ecstasies. Fairfax
deftly oiled the foot, kneeling before it as at a shrine of beauty. He
placed it in one of the basins and poured the plaster slowly over it,
sternly bidding her to control her giggles and her "ouches" as it could
not harm.

"Keep perfectly still. Do not budge till the plaster sets."

"Oh, it's setting already," she told him, "_hard_! You won't break off
my foot, Cousin Antony?"

"Nonsense."

Whilst the cast set he recited for them "St. Agnes's Eve," a great
favourite with the children, beyond their comprehension, but their
hearts nevertheless stirred to the melody. As Fairfax leant down to
break the model Bella helped him bravely.

"_Now_, might I put on my stocking, Cousin Antony?"

He had been pouring the warm plaster into the mould and had forgotten
her, and was reproached.

The twilight gathered and made friends with the storm as they waited for
the cast to harden. Old Ann came in and lighted the gas above the group
on the old divan.

"Be the hivenly powers! Mr. Fairfax, ye've here a power of a dirt."

Fairfax, who had taken a fancy to the patient old creature, who had'
known his mother and was really more a slave to the children than his
own black Mammy, bore the scolding peacefully.

"Ye're the childest of the three, sor."

Antony caught her arm. "Wait and see, old Ann," and he kneeled before
the cooled plaster and broke his model, released his work and held up
the cast.

"For the love of hiven, Mr. Antony, it's Miss Bella's foot ye've got,
sor."

She stared as at a miracle, then at her little lady as though she
expected to see a missing member. Bella danced around it, pleaded for
it, claimed it. Gardiner was allowed to feel how cold it was, and
Fairfax took it home in his overcoat pocket, anxious to get safely away
with it before his uncle came and smashed it, as he had the feeling
that Mr. Carew would some day smash everything for him. That night when
she undressed Bella regarded with favour the foot that had