nt; then the silence was promptly
broken by Robinette.

"Well, Middy dear, are we the best of friends?" she asked, rising from
the bench and putting out her hand.

The lad took it and said all in a glow of chivalry, "You're the
dearest, the best, and the prettiest cousin in the world! You don't
mind my thinking you're the prettiest?"

"Mind it? I delight in it! I shall come to your ship and pour out tea
for you in my most fetching frock. Your friends will say: 'Who is that
particularly agreeable lady, Carnaby?' And you, with swelling chest,
will respond, 'That's my American cousin, Mrs. Loring. She's a nice
creature; I'm glad you like her!'"

Robinette's imitation of Carnaby's possible pomposity was so amusing
and so clever that it drew a laugh from the boy in spite of himself.

"Just let anyone try to call you a 'creature'!" he exclaimed. "He'd
have me to reckon with! Oh! I am so tired of being a boy! The inside
of me is all grown up and everybody keeps on looking at the outside
and thinking I'm just the same as I always was!"

"Dear old Middy, you're quite old enough to be my protector and that
is what you shall be! Now shall we go in? I want you to stand near by
while I ask your grandmother a favor."

"She won't do it if she can help it," was Carnaby's succinct reply.

"Oh, I am not sure! Where shall we find her,--in the library?"

"Yes; come along! Get up your circulation; you'll need it!"

"Aunt de Tracy, there is something at Stoke Revel I am very anxious to
have if you will give it to me," said Robinette, as she came into the
library a few minutes later.

Mrs. de Tracy looked up from her knitting solemnly. "If it belongs to
me, I shall no doubt be willing, as I know you would not ask for
anything out of the common; but I own little here; nearly all is
Carnaby's."

"This was my mother's," said Robinette. "It is a picture hanging in
the smoking room; one that was a great favorite of hers, called
'Robinetta.' Her drawing-master found an Italian artist in London who
went to the National Gallery and made a copy of the Sir Joshua
picture, and I was named after it."

"I wish your mother could have been a little less romantic," sighed
Mrs. de Tracy. "There were such fine old family names she might have
used: Marcia and Elspeth, and Rosamond and Winifred!"

"I am sorry, Aunt de Tracy. If I had been consulted I believe I should
have agreed with you. Perhaps when my mother was in America the family
ties we