"

"But I'm _hot!_" declared Eleanor, throwing open her coat. "The house is
stifling. Can't we have a window open?"

Miss Isobel sighed. Like the rest of the family, she never knew what to
expect from this troublesome, adorable, disturbing mystery called
Eleanor. She worshiped her with the solicitous, over-anxious care that
saw fever in the healthy flush of youth, regarded a sneeze as premonitory
of consumption, and waited with dark certitude for the "something
dreadful" that instinct told her was ever about to happen to her darling.

"I am afraid your grandmother is terribly upset about your staying out so
late," she said, with a note of warning in her voice.

"What made you tell her?" demanded Eleanor.

"Because she asked me, and of course I could not deceive her. I don't
believe you know how hard it is to keep things from her."

"_Don't_ I!" said Eleanor, with the tolerant smile of a professional for
an amateur. "Well, a few minutes more won't make any difference. I'll go
and change my dress."

"No, dear; you must go to her first. She's been sending Hannah down every
few minutes to see if you were here."

"Oh, dear! I suppose I'm in for it!" sighed Eleanor, flinging her coat
across the banister. Then, in answer to a plaintive voice from the
library, "Yes, Aunt Enid?"

"Why on earth are you so late, sweetheart? Didn't you know your
grandmother would be fretted?"

The possessor of the plaintive voice emerged from the library, trailing
an Oriental scarf as she came. Like her elder sister, she was tall and
thin, but she did not wear Miss Isobel's look of martyred resignation. On
the contrary, she had the starved look of one who is constantly trying to
pick up the crumbs of interest that other people let fall.

Enid Bartlett might have passed for a pretty woman had her appearance not
been permanently affected by an artist once telling her she looked like a
Botticelli. Since that time she had done queer things to her hair, pursed
her lips, and cultivated an expression of chronic yearning.

"I haven't seen you since breakfast, Nellie," she said gently. "Haven't
you a kiss for me?"

Eleanor presented a perfunctory cheek over the banisters, taking care
that it was not the one that had been kissed a few minutes before.

"Remember your promise," Aunt Enid whispered; "don't forget that your
grandmother is an old lady and you must not excite her."

"But she excites me," said Eleanor doggedly. "She makes me want t