“Oh, Reynolds, is that so?  Why did you never tell me before that I was like him?”

“It did not occur to me to tell you.  Does it please you to know it?”

“Certainly it does.  It takes away the feeling that I am a changeling, which often haunts me when you tell me I am odd and unconventional,” I said, turning to Mrs. Flaxman.

“Darling, I would rather have you just as you are.  If we went to make improvements, we would only spoil a bit of God’s sweetest handiwork.”

“Oh, Mrs. Flaxman, what a tremendous compliment!  Mr. Winthrop would read you another lecture, if he heard you say that.”

“Some day we may need to lecture him,” she said with a smile, and then went into her own room, leaving me a trifle perplexed over her meaning.

When we joined Mr. Winthrop in the dining room we found the table laid with its usual precision and elegance for dinner.  As I stood on the hearth-rug, looking around the pleasant room, the firelight glancing on the polished silver, and china, and lighting up the beautiful pictures on the walls, no wonder the cheerful home scene made me, for the time, forget the solitary mourner with his dead, out in the cold and darkness.  Mrs. Flaxman presently joined me.  Drawing her an easy-chair close to the cheerful blaze I knelt on the rug beside her, the easier to stroke Fleta, the pretty Angora cat, who with her rough tongue licked my hand with affectionate welcome.  Presently Mr. Winthrop joined us.  His presence at first unnoticed in our busy chat, I happened to turn my head and saw him calmly regarding us.  “You would make a pleasant picture, kneeling there with the firelight playing in your hair,” he said, coming to my side.

“The picture would be more perfect now that you have joined us.”

“No, my presence would spoil it.  A child playing with her kitten needs no other figures to complete the picture.”

“Ah, that spoils your compliment.”

“Mr. Winthrop very judiciously mixes his sweets and bitters,” Mrs. Flaxman said with a smile.

“Yes; I should be too vain if he gave me a compliment really.  I wonder if he ever will do that?” I looked up into his face and saw that its expression was kindly.

“You would not wish me to spoil you.  If my praising you made you vain, as you just said it would, that would be the worst unkindness.”

“I want you always to be honest with me.  A very slight word of praise then will have its genuine meaning.”

“Now that we have once more settled our relations to each other, we will take our dinners.  One must descend from the highest summits to the trivialities of eating and drinking.”

“I have never seen you very high up yet, Mr. Winthrop.  I do not think there is a spark of sentiment in your composition.”

“Alas, that I should be so misjudged.  But wait until your friend Bovyer shows you my tears.”

Mrs. Flaxman generally looked a trifle worried when Mr. Winthrop and I got into conversation.  This night, when I wanted every one to be happy, I held my troublesome tongue in check, and made no further reply to my guardian’s badinage.