Instantly I had the feeling one sometimes has, of having done just that same thing, with the same surroundings, in the same place, years before, I was looking up at him, and he was staring down at me and holding my hand.  And then the music stopped and he was saying: 

“Where was it?”

“Where was what?” I asked.  The feeling was stronger than ever with his voice.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, and let my hand drop.  “Just for a second I had an idea that we had met before somewhere, a long time ago.  I suppose—­no, it couldn’t have happened, or I should remember.”  He was smiling, half at himself.

“No,” I smiled back at him.  “It didn’t happen, I’m afraid—­unless we dreamed it.”

“We?”

“I felt that way, too, for a moment.”

“The Brushwood Boy!” he said with conviction.  “Perhaps we will find a common dream life, where we knew each other.  You remember the Brushwood Boy loved the girl for years before they really met.”  But this was a little too rapid, even for me.

“Nothing so sentimental, I’m afraid,” I retorted.  “I have had exactly the same sensation sometimes when I have sneezed.”

Betty Mercer captured him then and took him off to see Jim’s newest picture.  Anne pounced on me at once.

“Isn’t he delicious?” she demanded.  “Did you ever see such shoulders?  And such a nose?  And he thinks we are parasites, cumberers of the earth, Heaven knows what.  He says every woman ought to know how to earn her living, in case of necessity!  I said I could make enough at bridge, and he thought I was joking!  He’s a dear!” Anne was enthusiastic.

I looked after him.  Oddly enough the feeling that we had met before stuck to me.  Which was ridiculous, of course, for we learned afterward that the nearest we ever came to meeting was that our mothers had been school friends!  Just then I saw Jim beckoning to me crazily from the den.  He looked quite yellow, and he had been running his fingers through his hair.

“For Heaven’s sake, come in, Kit!” he said.  “I need a cool head.  Didn’t I tell you this is my calamity day?”

“Cook gone?” I asked with interest.  I was starving.

He closed the door and took up a tragic attitude in front of the fire.  “Did you ever hear of Aunt Selina?” he demanded.

“I knew there was one,” I ventured, mindful of certain gossip as to whence Jimmy derived the Wilson income.

Jim himself was too worried to be cautious.  He waved a brazen hand at the snug room, at the Japanese prints on the walls, at the rugs, at the teakwood cabinets and the screen inlaid with pearl and ivory.

“All this,” he said comprehensively, “every bite I eat, clothes I wear, drinks I drink—­you needn’t look like that; I don’t drink so darned much—­everything comes from Aunt Selina—­buttons,” he finished with a groan.

“Selina Buttons,” I said reflectively.  “I don’t remember ever having known any one named Buttons, although I had a cat once—­”