turning to throw himself on the hard green bench with an impatient
sigh. Evidently She was late.

An omelet arrived for me, and still my neighbor was alone; but I had
scarcely taken up my fork when a light, tripping step sounded crisply on
the crushed sea-shells of the path outside. A shadow darkened the
doorway, and for an instant a pocket-edition of a woman, in a neat but
well-worn tailor-made dress, hung on my threshold. Rather like a trim
gray sparrow she was, expecting a crumb, then changing her mind and
hopping further on to find it.

But the change of mind came only with the springing up of the young man
in the adjoining arbor.

"_Aunt Fay_, is that you?" he inquired, in an anxious voice, speaking
the name with marked emphasis.

"Oh!" chirped the gray sparrow, flitting to the next doorway, "I must
have counted wrong. I saw a young man alone, and--Then you are my
nephew--_Ronald_."

She also threw stress upon the name and the relationship, and, though I
knew nothing of the face that lurked behind a tissue veil, I became
aware that the lady was an American.

"Funny thing," I said to myself. "They don't seem to have met before.
She must be a long-lost aunt."

My neighbor would have ushered his relative into the arbor, but she
lingered outside.

"Come, Tibe," she cried, with a shrill change of tone. "Here, Tibe,
Tibe, Tibe!"

There was a sudden stir in the garden, a pulling of chairs closer to
small tables, a jumping about of waiters, a few stifled shrieks in
feminine voices, and a powerful tan-colored bulldog, with a peculiarly
concentrated and earnest expression on his countenance, bounded through
the crowd toward his mistress, with a fine disregard of obstacles.
Evidently, if there was any dodging to be done, he had been brought up
to expect others to do it; and I thought the chances were that he would
seldom be disappointed.

[Illustration: _There was a sudden stir in the garden._]

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Nephew Ronald, as the monster cannoned against
him. "You didn't mention This."

"No; I knew you were sure to love him. I wouldn't have anything to do
with a creature who didn't. Isn't he exquisite?"

"He's a dream," said the young man; but he did not specify what kind of
dream.

"Where I go, there Tibe goes also," went on the lady. "His name is
Tiberius, but it's rather long to say when he's doing something that you
want him to stop. He'll lunch with us like a perfect gentleman. Oh, he
is