hen you came to me and started to grow out of your
clothes with such alarming rapidity. When your white satin,
long-waisted frock grew too small for you, you said, for you did not
like giving it up, 'I can really get into it if I hold myself in like
_this_. And anyhow I've given up pudding!'"

"Ah, that was the worst of me," said Eileen mournfully. "I could never
continue long doing without pudding."

She came down to dinner wearing a pale green frock with a prim fichu of
chiffon and lace. Terry had already arrived and was in the
drawing-room, standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire.

"Hullo, Eileen!" he shouted, "How stunning you look! You grow prettier
every day!"

The compliment was too brotherly in its easy candour to please her
altogether: but she knew very well she was "stunning." She could see
herself in a long old-fashioned mirror on the wall. Her hair was like
gold floss. There was no sign of the embonpoint she feared in the
slender grace of her figure. The pearls about her neck became her
mightily, as did the green ribbon, the same shade as her dress, snooded
in her hair.

She lifted her eyes to the boy's frank gaze in a way which she had
usually found very effective. She had been able to do anything with
Terry when she looked at him like that, and she had tried the same
allurement on others than Terry.

"You're only just back," he went on. "Jolly nice of you to come for
me. The mater must have missed you."

"They insist on my presence at Inver now and again. I don't know why.
It is very unreasonable of them!"

She put out a satin slipper and stirred Shot with it.

"The only drawback to this dear house," she said, "is that there are
dogs everywhere."

Shot growled in his sleep. Perhaps she had not touched him in quite
the right way. She withdrew her foot in alarm, more alarm that she
felt, and turned eyes of a child-like fear upon Terry. "Oh! Shot is
cross," she said innocently. The man in Terry answered. He bent
towards her as though drawn irresistibly.

There was a flutter of feminine garments in the doorway of the room.
Some one looked in and withdrew. Sir Shawn, coming down the stairs,
did not notice the small figure by the fire in the hall, fast fading to
ashes, the centre of a circle of adoring dogs, who had withdrawn
themselves from Miss Creagh's unfriendliness.

He went on to the drawing-room door. He too was attracted by the
tableau. Nothing could have