“Well,” said Florence; “I do wish if these cats are as fine as all that, it was Noble Dill that gave ’em to you.  I’d like these cats lots better if he gave ’em to you, wouldn’t you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Well——­” Florence said again, and departed.

Twenty is an unsuspicious age, except when it fears that its dignity or grace may be threatened from without; and it might have been a “bad sign” in revelation of Julia Atwater’s character if she had failed to accept the muffled metallic clash of the front door’s closing as a token that her niece had taken a complete departure for home.  A supplemental confirmation came a moment later, fainter but no less conclusive:  the distant slamming of the front gate; and it made a clear picture of an obedient Florence on her homeward way.  Peace came upon Julia:  she read in her book, while at times she dropped a languid, graceful arm, and, with the pretty hand at the slimmer end of it, groped in a dark shelter beneath her couch to make a selection, merely by her well-experienced sense of touch, from a frilled white box that lay in concealment there.  Then, bringing forth a crystalline violet become scented sugar, or a bit of fruit translucent in hardened sirup, she would delicately set it on the way to that attractive dissolution hoped for it by the wistful donor—­and all without removing her shadowy eyes from the little volume and its patient struggle for dignified rhymes with “Julia.”  Florence was no longer in her beautiful relative’s thoughts.

Florence was idly in the thoughts, however, of Mrs. Balche, the next-door neighbour to the south.  Happening to glance from a bay-window, she negligently marked how the child walked to the front gate, opened it, paused for a moment’s meditation, then hurled the gate to a vigorous closure, herself remaining within its protection.  “Odd!” Mrs. Balche murmured.

Having thus eloquently closed the gate, Florence slowly turned and moved toward the rear of the house, quickening her steps as she went, until at a run she disappeared from the scope of Mrs. Balche’s gaze, cut off by the intervening foliage of Mr. Atwater’s small orchard.  Mrs. Balche felt no great interest; nevertheless, she paused at the sound of a boy’s voice, half husky, half shrill, in an early stage of change.  “What she say, Flor’nce?  D’she say we could?” But there came a warning “Hush up!” from Florence, and then, in a lowered tone, the boy’s voice said:  “Look here; these are mighty funny-actin’ cats.  I think they’re kind of crazy or somep’n.  Kitty Silver’s fixed a washtub full o’ suds for us.”