“Now I am nicely rested,” said she, soon after; “and I am afraid you must begin to be nicely tired.  Do you not?”

“No, indeed; I seldom do till nine o’clock at night.”

“Then we will indulge ourselves here still a little longer.  But hark!  Are not there my little people back from school?”

The expression common to those who love children stole into her face.  Young voices were drawing nearer.

“Come to my arms, O lovely cherub!” said one that had a boyish sound in it, paternally.

“Look out and see them,” whispered Miss Dudley to me.

I peeped through the blinds.  A handsome and very graceful olive-hued boy, apparently about fourteen years old, with a form like that of the Mercury upborne by a zephyr, eyes like stars, lashes like star-beams, and an expression that would have made him a good study for a picture of Puck, half leaning, half sitting, on the stone balustrade, was tenderly dandling in his arms a huge, vulgar-looking, gray, striped stable-cat, that rolled and writhed therein in transports of comfort and affection.

“But, indeed, Paul,” remonstrated another voice, tout comme un serin, “Pet ought to be whipped instead of hugged!  Lily says so.”

“Tiger Lily?  What a cruel girl!  O, my Pettitoes! how can she say so?”

“Why,” answered another girlish voice, a little firmer, but hardly less sweet, than the first, “only think!  While we were all in school, he watched his opportunity and killed the robin that lives in the crab-apple-tree.  The gardener says he heard it cry, and ran with his hoe; and there was this wicked, horrid, grim, great Pet galloping as fast as he could gallop to the stable, with its poor little beak sticking out at one side of his grinning mouth, and its tail at the other!”

“Why, Pettitoes! how very inconsiderate!  You won’t serve it so another time, will you?  Though how a robin can have the face to squeak when he catches it himself at noon, after cramming himself with worms the whole morning, is more than I can see!”

“O no, Paul!  He was singing most sweetly!  I heard him; and so did Rose.”

“And so did I. He was singing through his nose as bad as Deacon Piper, because he had a worm in his mouth.  He couldn’t leave off gobbling one single minute,—­not even to practise his music.”

“Let us go out,” said Miss Dudley.

We did so.  Paul’s retreating back was all that was to be seen of the boy, with Pet’s peaceful chin pillowed upon his shoulder, as, borne off in triumph, he looked calmly back at Lily, who stood shaking her small, chiselled ivory finger at him.  Rose was still beside her, with her arm around her waist, as if in propitiation.