g as you sit tight and do your hair like that,
nobody could take you for anything but a dear little bunny with its ears
laid back. But if you get palpitations in your little nose, and turn up
your little white tail at people, and scuttle away when they look at
you, you can't blame them if they wonder what's the matter with you."

"With _me_?"

"Yes; it's you who give the show away." Kitty smiled into her liqueur
glass. "It doesn't seem to strike you that your behaviour compromises
me."

Miss Keating's mouth twitched. Her narrow, rather prominent front teeth
lifted an instant, and then closed sharply on her lower lip. Her throat
trembled as if she were swallowing some bitter thing that had been on
the tip of her tongue.

"If you think that," she said, and her voice crowed no longer, "wouldn't
it be better for us not to be together?"

Kitty shook her meditative head. "Poor Bunny," said she, "why can't you
be honest? Why don't you say plump out that you're sick and tired of
me? _I_ should be. I couldn't stand another woman lugging me about as I
lug you."

"It isn't _that_. Only--everywhere we go--there's always some horrible
man."

"Everywhere you go, dear lamb, there always will be."

"Yes; but one doesn't have anything to do with them."

"I don't have anything to do with them."

"You talk to them."

"Of course I do," said Kitty. "Why not?"

"You don't know them."

"H'm! If you never talk to people you don't know, pray how do you get to
know them?"

Kitty sat up and began playing with the matches till she held a bunch of
them blazing in her hand. She was blowing out the flame as the Hankins
came up the steps of the veranda. They had a smile for the old lady in
her corner, and for Miss Keating a look of wonder and curiosity and
pity; but they turned from Mrs. Tailleur with guarded eyes.

"What do you bet," said Kitty, "that I don't make that long man there
come and talk to me?"

"If you do----"

"I'll do it before you count ten. One, two, three, four. I shall ask him
for a light----"

"Sh-sh! He's coming."

Kitty slid her feet to the floor and covered them with her skirt. Then
she looked down, fascinated, apparently, by the shining tips of her
shoes. You could have drawn a straight line from her feet to the feet of
the man coming up the lawn.

"Five, six, seven." Kitty lit her last match. "T-t-t! The jamfounded
thing's gone out."

The long man's sister came up the steps of the veranda. The lon