h of her fingers. "Why,
Goosie--there's something--something. Why, Goosie!"

The last was almost a cry, and the silence that followed had an
awe-stricken pulse. "What is it?" he asked, still busily brushing.

"Why, there's something"--again he felt the tender touch of her
fingers--"there're a lot of little things--a lot of little things
pricking right through the skin!"

"Let me rub it some more," he said, transferring the brush. "Now, look at
it," he said, after several more vigorous minutes of his strange
treatment.

"Goosie!"

This time it was a cry to stab the heart. He dropped the brush and looked
up at her. She was pale, and her eyes were very big. "Well, what is the
matter now," he asked impatiently.

She came near again, still pale, but with lips tight. "A-ouch!" he
yelped.

For with a sudden sharp movement, she had plucked something out of his
shoulder. A smart came into his eyes; it was as if a lock of hair had
been pulled out by the roots. "Look at this, Goosie," she said with
forced calmness, and placed something in his hand.

It was very small and very soft. He dropped his eyes upon it as it lay
lightly in his palm. "Good lord!" he ejaculated, his bad humor gone
suddenly into a genuine concern; "Good Lord!" he said, rising to his feet
in consternation; "it's a; it's a----"

"It's a feather," said Dolly, with sepulchral finality; "it's a feather."

It was a feather--a soft, downy, white, baby feather. Charles-Norton
looked at it long, as it lay, shivering slightly, there in his palm. He
took it up and passed the luster of it slowly through his fingers.
Something like a smile gradually came into his face. He raised the
feather against the light of the lamp. His eyes brightened.

"Isn't it pretty, Dolly?" he said. "Isn't it pretty? just look at it. So
white, and fresh, and new, and glistening. And see the curve, the slender
curve of it--oh, Dolly, isn't it pretty and fine?"

But Dolly, collapsed in a chair, broke out a-crying. "Oh, Goosie, Goosie,
what are we going to do now?" she wailed; "what are we to do? O--O----"

"Well," said Charles-Norton, the spirit of contradiction which for
several days had been within him rising to his lips; "well, _I_ don't see
what there is to make so much fuss about. A few feathers are not going to
hurt a man, are they? 'Tisn't as if I were insane, or had hydrophobia!"

"But, Goosie, Goosie, _no_ one has feathers on his shoulders! No one
_ever_ had feathers on h