ne.

"Tired, Cousin Ted?" Cicely had dropped down on the couch beside her.

"Not a bit."

"Worried?"

"No, indeed."

"I was afraid something was wrong, you were so quiet." The girl bent over
and fell to touching Theodora's hair with light fingers. Suddenly she
stooped and snuggled her face against Theodora's cheek. "Oh, I do love to
cuddle you," she said impulsively. "I hope you don't mind. Papa used to
let me; I wonder if he doesn't miss it sometimes."

Putting out her arm, Theodora drew the girl down at her side.

"Are you homesick, Cicely?"

"For papa, not for anything else. If he were here, or even well, I should
be perfectly happy here. Only, Cousin Theodora--"

"Well?"

"Are we very much in the way, Billy and I? We don't belong here, I know;
and it isn't our doing that we came. Are you sorry that we are here?"

"No. I am glad to have you with us, Cicely."

Theodora spoke the truth. In some strange fashion she had grown
unaccountably fond of Cicely during the past four weeks. The girl was no
saint; she was only a clean-minded, healthy young thing, born of good
stock, trained by a wise father who believed that, even at sixteen, his
tall daughter was still a child, not a premature society girl. He
insisted upon plain gowns and a pigtail, upon hearty exercise and
wholesome friendships with boys as well as with girls. So far as lay in
his power, he had taught Cicely "to ride, to row, to swim, to tell the
truth and to fight the devil," and the result was quite to the liking of
Billy and Theodora. They enjoyed Cicely's irresponsible fun and her frank
expressions of opinion; they enjoyed the atmosphere of ozone that never
failed to surround her; they even confessed, when they were quite by
themselves, to a sneaking sense of enjoyment in her rare flashes of
temper. True, it was not always helpful to Theodora to be roused from her
work by the monotonous _er-er, er-er_ of scales and five finger
exercises, and there were moments when she wondered if pianos were never
built with only a soft pedal and that lashed into a position which would
entail chronic operation. There were moments when the house jarred with
the slamming of doors and echoed to the shouts of a high, clear young
voice; and there were hours and hours when Melchisedek, as he was now to
be called, whimpered without ceasing outside her door, with an
exasperating determination to come in and sit supreme in the midst of her
manuscript.

And then the