my pretty frock like a bird caught in a child's hand! You remember
my writing you what a friendship Ellaline and Kathy struck up, before
Kathy left school to go back to England, and how she sent Ellaline
cuttings from the London Radical papers about Sir Lionel Pendragon in
Bengal? I do think it's almost ungentlemanly of so many coincidences to
happen in connection with what I'm trying to do for Ellaline. But
Kathy's such a lump, it's too great a compliment to call her a
coincidence. Anyhow, Dick met her in town, at a tea party (a "bun
worry," he called it) where he went with his dear Aunt Gwen; and when
Kathy mentioned being at school at Madame de Maluet's, he asked if she
knew Miss Lethbridge. She said of course she did, and she thought
Ellaline was a "very naughty little thing" not to write or come and see
her. She had read in the papers about the arrival of Sir Lionel with his
sister and ward, you see.

Dick remarked that he'd hardly call Miss Lethbridge a "little thing,"
whereupon Kathy defended her adjective by saying Ellaline was only about
up to her ear.

Of course that set Mr. Dick's detective bump to throbbing furiously. He
reassured me by announcing that he hadn't said any more to Kathy, but
that he'd thought a lot. In fact, he thought so much that he asked if
she'd give him a line of introduction to Madame, as he had a cousin who
wanted to go to a French school, and next time he "ran across to Paris,"
he might have a look at Versailles. Kathy gave the note, and that same
night, if you'll believe it, the horrid little boy did "run across." At
the earliest hour possible in the morning he called at the school, only
to find Madame already away for her holidays. But you know she always
leaves her sister, Mademoiselle Prado, to look after things, and when
Mademoiselle heard what Dick wanted, she showed him all over the place.
He said he would like to see photographs of the young ladies in groups,
if any such existed, because he could write his Australian cousin what
nice, happy-looking girls they were. Promptly that poor, unsuspecting
female produced the big picture Madame had done of the tea-party on the
lawn, a year ago in June, and there was I in it. But Dick was too foxy
to begin by asking questions about me. Kathy adorned the photograph
also, with Ellaline on her right and me in the perspective of her left
ear, which must have seemed to point at me accusingly. Dick could claim
Kathy quite naturally, as he'd c