y. "No quarter! Remember the Alamo!"

The man at the door had been too horrified to speak, but he found his
voice now.

"Oh, you hush up, Dawson!" said the boy; and to Selwyn he added
tentatively, "Hello!"

"Hello yourself," replied Selwyn, keeping off the circling pups with the
point of his stick. "What is this, anyway--a Walpurgis hunt?--or Eliza
and the bloodhounds?"

Several children, disentangling themselves from the heap, rose to
confront the visitor; the shocked man, Dawson, attempted to speak again,
but Selwyn's raised hand quieted him.

The small boy with the blond hair stepped forward and dragged several
dogs from the vicinity of Selwyn's shins.

"This is the Shallowbrook hunt," he explained; "I am Master of Hounds;
my sister Drina, there, is one of the whips. Part of the game is to all
fall down together and pretend we've come croppers. You see, don't you?"

"I see," nodded Selwyn; "it's a pretty stiff hunting country, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. There's wire, you know," volunteered the girl, Drina,
rubbing the bruises on her plump shins.

"Exactly," agreed Selwyn; "bad thing, wire. Your whips should warn you."

The big black cat, horribly bored by the proceedings, had settled down
on a hall seat, keeping one disdainful yellow eye on the dogs.

"All the same, we had a pretty good run," said Drina, taking the cat
into her arms and seating herself on the cushions; "didn't we, Kit-Ki?"
And, turning to Selwyn, "Kit-Ki makes a pretty good fox--only she isn't
enough afraid of us to run away very fast. Won't you sit down? Our
mother is not at home, but we are."

"Would you really like to have me stay?" asked Selwyn.

"Well," admitted Drina frankly, "of course we can't tell yet how
interesting you are because we don't know you. We are trying to be
polite--" and, in a fierce whisper, turning on the smaller of the
boys--"Winthrop! take your finger out of your mouth and stop staring at
guests! Billy, you make him behave himself."

The blond-haired M.F.H. reached for his younger brother; the infant
culprit avoided him and sullenly withdrew the sucked finger but not his
fascinated gaze.

"I want to know who he ith," he lisped in a loud aside.

"So do I," admitted a tiny maid in stickout skirts.

Drina dropped the cat, swept the curly hair from her eyes, and stood up
very straight in her kilts and bare knees.

"They don't really mean to be rude," she explained; "they're only
children." Then, detecting th