says Barbara, shutting the caddy with a snap, "that Providence
had willed to send the dear old fellow into the world twenty years later
than it did. In that case I should not at all have minded trying to be a
comfort to him."

"He must have been very good-looking, must not he?" say I, pensively,
staring at the red fire-caverns. "Very--before his hair turned gray. I
wonder what color it was?"

Visions of gold yellow, of sunshiny brown, of warm chestnut locks,
travel in succession before my mind's eye, and try in turn to adjust
themselves to the good and goodly weather-worn face, and wide blue eyes
of my new old friend.

"It is so nice and curly even now," I go on, "twice as curly as Algy's."

"Tongs," replies Algy, with short contempt, looking up from his list of
prohibitions.

"_Very_ good-looking!" repeat I, dogmatically, entirely ignoring the
last suggestion.

"Perhaps when this planet was young!" retorts he, with the superb
impertinence of twenty.

"You talk as if he were eighty years old," cry I, with an unaccountably
_personal_ feeling of annoyance. "He is _only_ forty-seven!"

"_Only_ forty-seven!"

And they all laugh.

"Well, I must be going, I suppose," cry I, leisurely rising, stretching,
sighing, and beginning to collect the various articles of my wardrobe,
scattered over the furniture. "Good-by, dear teapot! good-by, dear plum
loaf! _how_ I wish I was going to stay with you! It really is ten
minutes past dressing-time, and father is always so pleased when one
keeps him waiting for his soup."

"He would not say any thing to you to-day if you _were_ late," says
Bobby, astutely. "You might tumble over his gouty foot, and he would
smile! Are we not the most united family in Christendom--_when we have
company_?"

After all, I need not have disquieted myself; I am in very good time.
When I open the drawing-room door, and make my entrance in the borrowed
splendor of Barbara's broad blue-sash tails, and the white virginity of
my own muslin frock, I find that neither of my parents have as yet made
their appearance. Sir Roger has the hearth-rug to himself; at least he
only shares it with Vick, and she is asleep; sitting very upright, it is
true, with her thin tail round her toes, like a cat's, her head and
whole body swaying from side to side in indisputable slumber. At sight
of the chaste and modest apparition that the opened door yields to his
gaze, an exclamation of pleasure escapes him--at least it