its
violet lining.

"It's perfectly beautiful here to-day," she said as the hostess greeted
her; "but, oh, Mrs. Barry, I suppose I'm a fool to ever believe
Ben"--the speaker cast a glance around at her escort--"but you won't let
him have a zebra, will you? They're the most dangerous animals. He says
you're goin' to give him--"

"My dear Miss Upton," Mrs. Barry laughed, "I do need a scolding, I know.
I've allowed myself to be talked into something crazy--crazy. It's much
worse than a zebra, but you know what a big disappointment Ben had last
year--flapping his wings and aching and longing to go across the sea
while Uncle Sam obstinately refused to let him go over and end the War?
All dressed up and no place to go! Poor Benny!" Mrs. Barry glanced at
her son, laughing. "He did need some consolation prize, and anyway he
persuaded me to let him have an aeroplane."

"Mrs.--_Barry_!" returned Miss Mehitable, and she gazed around at Ben
with wide eyes.

"I'm such a bird, you see," he explained.

"Well," said the visitor after a pause, drawing her suspended breath,
"I'm glad I can talk to you before you're killed."

"Oh, not so bad as that," said Mrs. Barry. "He is at home in the air,
you know, and he assures me they will soon be quite common. Come up on
the veranda, Miss Upton. I'm going to hide you and Ben in a corner
where no one will disturb you."

"What a big place for you to live in all alone," observed Mehitable as
they moved toward the house, and Ben drove the car to the garage.

"Yes, it is; but I'm so busy with my chickens and my bees I'm never
lonely. I'm quite a farmer, Miss Upton. See how fine my orchard is this
year? I tell Ben that so long as he doesn't light in my apple-trees we
can be friends."

"I think you're awful venturesome, Mrs. Barry!"

That lady smiled as they moved up the steps to the veranda, the black
and violet folds of her shimmering wrap blowing about her in lines of
beauty that fascinated her companion.

"What else can the mother of a boy be?" she returned. "Ben has been
training me in courage ever since he was born; apparently the prize-ring
or the circus would have been his natural field of operations; so I have
chained him down to the law and given him an aeroplane so he can work
off his extra steam away from the publicity of earth."

At last the hostess withdrew, and Miss Upton found herself alone with
her embryo lawyer in a sheltered corner of the porch where the vines
were ha