ide his hostess and carried on an animated conversation with her as
to the nature and effect of the various patent medicines they had
mutually sampled; while the remaining guest, Mr. Dowson, sat next to
Antonia, and endeavoured, without much success, to attract her attention
to himself.

Halfway through one of his most intimate speeches Toni interrupted him
ruthlessly.

"Aunt Jean, where's Lu?"

"Got smacked and sent to bed for stealing jam," her youngest cousin
informed her unctuously. "My! She did howl! I guess Ma thumped her
pretty well!"

"I did whip her rather hard," confessed Mrs. Gibbs half-apologetically.
"I was real vexed with her when I found her with her fingers in the jar!
But there, she's been wanting a smacking long enough, and I expect it'll
do her good," she finished up cheerfully.

"Poor Lu! And she'd been so looking forward to to-night!" Toni's soft
heart was wrung for the culprit. "Did she have any tea, Auntie?"

"Not she. I sent her straight off to bed." Mrs. Gibbs' tone was uneasy
now. "And she didn't eat no dinner to-day, she was that excited!"

"Oh, poor Lu! Can't I take her up something, Aunt Jean?"

Mrs. Gibbs appeared to consider the question, though everyone at the
table knew very well that her mother-heart had relented towards her
darling long ago.

"Well, I don't mind if you do take her just a bite," she said presently;
and amid much laughter and sympathetic joking a tray was fitted out with
various delicacies and entrusted to the willing hands of Antonia.

Up she went, finding Lu's room in darkness, Lu herself lying sullenly
awake, refusing to be comforted.

Her plump little person had strongly resented the force of her mother's
stern hand; but her vanity was more severely hurt by the fact that the
visitors downstairs would know both the cause and the method of her
punishment. Therefore she turned away and pretended to be asleep; but
Toni's gentle hand pulling down the clothes, Toni's soft voice murmuring
of forgiveness and compensation were too much for the child.

She sat up, disclosing the tear-stains on her round cheeks in the light
of the candle Toni carried, and allowed herself to be comforted with
alternate bites of chicken and sips of lemonade.

"That's better!" Toni gave her a plate of trifle, and brushed back the
tangled curls from the hot little forehead. "Now eat that up and then I
must run away. They're waiting for me, you know, so when you've finished
you must