e happened, or I should remember." He was
smiling, half at himself.

"No," I smiled back at him. "It didn't happen, I'm afraid--unless we
dreamed it."

"We?"

"I felt that way, too, for a moment."

"The Brushwood Boy!" he said with conviction. "Perhaps we will find a
common dream life, where we knew each other. You remember the Brushwood
Boy loved the girl for years before they really met." But this was a
little too rapid, even for me.

"Nothing so sentimental, I'm afraid," I retorted. "I have had exactly
the same sensation sometimes when I have sneezed."

Betty Mercer captured him then and took him off to see Jim's newest
picture. Anne pounced on me at once.

"Isn't he delicious?" she demanded. "Did you ever see such shoulders?
And such a nose? And he thinks we are parasites, cumberers of the earth,
Heaven knows what. He says every woman ought to know how to earn her
living, in case of necessity! I said I could make enough at bridge, and
he thought I was joking! He's a dear!" Anne was enthusiastic.

I looked after him. Oddly enough the feeling that we had met before
stuck to me. Which was ridiculous, of course, for we learned afterward
that the nearest we ever came to meeting was that our mothers had been
school friends! Just then I saw Jim beckoning to me crazily from the
den. He looked quite yellow, and he had been running his fingers through
his hair.

"For Heaven's sake, come in, Kit!" he said. "I need a cool head. Didn't
I tell you this is my calamity day?"

"Cook gone?" I asked with interest. I was starving.

He closed the door and took up a tragic attitude in front of the fire.
"Did you ever hear of Aunt Selina?" he demanded.

"I knew there WAS one," I ventured, mindful of certain gossip as to
whence Jimmy derived the Wilson income.

Jim himself was too worried to be cautious. He waved a brazen hand at
the snug room, at the Japanese prints on the walls, at the rugs, at the
teakwood cabinets and the screen inlaid with pearl and ivory.

"All this," he said comprehensively, "every bite I eat, clothes I wear,
drinks I drink--you needn't look like that; I don't drink so darned
much--everything comes from Aunt Selina--buttons," he finished with a
groan.

"Selina Buttons," I said reflectively. "I don't remember ever having
known any one named Buttons, although I had a cat once--"

"Damn the cat!" he said rudely. "Her name isn't Buttons. Her name is
Caruthers, my Aunt Selina Caruthers, and the money