“Bring that dress to me at once.  I am astonished at you.  The only decent thing you have!” Mrs. Parton sat down and clasped her hands in an attitude of desperation.

Followed by the kitten, Belle departed, returning directly with the blue and white checked silk over her arm.

“Whatever it is,” her mother continued, I want you to look nice; Betty says Rosalind Whittredge has beautiful clothes.”

“I just know she is a prig,” remarked Belle, caressing the kitten.

“No, she isn’t!” A tumbled head and a pair of eyes very like Belle’s own peered out suddenly from beneath the table cover.  “If she was, she wouldn’t have run away to take supper with Morgan.”

“Mercy upon us, Jack! you are enough to startle the sphinx.  Come out from under that table at once,” commanded his mother.

“Did she do that?” asked Belle, with some interest, adding, “Is it very bad, mother?  Can you clean it?  How do you know she did, Jack?”

Mrs. Parton shook her head; “I’ll try French chalk,” she said.

“Miss Betty said so.  She saw her,” put in Jack.

Mrs. Parton rose.  “Another time when you lose a penny, I will make it good rather than have your best dress spoiled,” she remarked.

“But you see, mother, it was a church penny,” Belle explained, as if she were mentioning some rare and peculiar coin.  “Arthur brought the collection home because Uncle Ranney wasn’t there, and when he untied his handkerchief on the porch a penny dropped out and rolled into the grass.”

“Who is going to Miss Betty’s?” Jack asked, as his mother left the room.

“Maurice and Katherine and you and me, and the Ellises, and—­I don’t know who.”

“I know it will be stupid; I don’t think I’ll go.”

“If it is stupid, you will make it so,” retorted his sister, adding, “and you will go, too, for mother will make you; besides, you know you wouldn’t miss Sophy’s waffles.”  Belle departed with the kitten, leaving Jack to return to the latest Henty book and his retreat under the table.

The Partons’ was a square house, with a wide hall dividing it through the middle and opening on a porch at either end.  When the weather at all permitted, these doors stood wide open, and dogs and cats and children ran in and out as they pleased.  In the afternoons Colonel Parton sat on the front porch smoking and reading, threatening the dogs and the children indiscriminately, receiving not the slightest attention from either.

As she passed him now, Belle mischievously deposited the kitten on his shoulder.

“You baggage, you!  Take this thing off me,” thundered the colonel, as the kitten made its claws felt in a frantic endeavor to hold on in its perilous position.

“O father! don’t hurt her,” Belle cried, running to the rescue, and in the scuffle that followed, the unfortunate kitten escaped.

“Don’t you let me catch you doing a thing like that again,” scolded the colonel, as he picked up his paper and settled himself in his chair again.