“A great deal younger than you are:  only seven years old.  But that is a long time ago.  I should like to be kind to you, Miss O’Hara.  Cassandra has been telling me about you.  You are living at the Tennants’, are you not?  Alice Tennant and Cassandra are great friends.”

“But I don’t like either of them,” said Kathleen in her blunt way.

Mrs. Weldon looked a little startled.

“Do you know my daughter?” she asked.

“She is much too interfering, and she is frightfully stuck-up.  Please forgive me, but I am always very plain-spoken; I always tell the truth.  I don’t want her.  I like you, and wish that I lived with you, and that you’d have Ruth Craven instead of your own daughter in the house.  Then I’d be perfectly happy.  I always did say what I thought.  Will you forgive me?”

“I will, dear, because at the present moment you don’t know my girl at all.  There never was a more splendid girl in all the world, but she requires to be known.  Ah! here she comes, and your little friend, Miss Craven, with her.”

Ruth, looking very pretty, with a delicate flush on each cheek, now entered the room in the company of Cassandra.  Kathleen sprang up the minute she saw Ruth, rushed across the room, and flung one arm with considerable violence round her neck.

“You have come,” she said.  “I have been hunting the place for you.  How dared you go away and hide yourself?  Don’t you know that you belong to me?  The moment I saw you I knew that you were my affinity.  Don’t you know what an affinity means?  Well, you are mine.  We were twin souls before birth; now we have met again and we cannot part.  I am ever so happy when I am with you.  Don’t mind those others; let them stare all they like.  I am going to take you foundation girls up.  I have made up my mind.  We will have a rollicking good time—­a splendid time.  We will be as naughty as we like, and we will let the others see what we are made of.  It will be war to the knife between the foundation girls and the good, proper, paying girls.  Let the ladies look after themselves.  We of the foundation will lead our own life, and be as happy as the day is long.  Aren’t you glad to see me, dear, sweet, pretty Ruth?  Don’t you know for yourself that you are my affinity—­my chosen friend, my beloved?  Through the ages we have been one, and now we have met in the flesh.”

“I think,” said Cassandra, at last managing to get herself heard, “that you have said enough for the present, Miss O’Hara.  Ruth Craven has come to spend the day with me.  I know that you are an Irish girl, and you must be lonely.  I shall be very pleased if you will join Ruth and me in our walk.  We are going for a walk across the common.—­We shall be in to tea, dear mother.  Will you have it ready for us not later than five o’clock?  And I am sure you will join me, mother darling, in asking Miss O’Hara to stay, too.”

“But Miss O’Hara doesn’t want to join either you or your ’mother darling,’” said Kathleen in her rudest tone.  “It is Ruth I want.  I have come here for her.  She must return with me at once.”