her over.  Gerty winced sharply.  A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke volumes of scorn immeasurable.  It hurt—­O yes, it cut deep because Edy had her own quiet way of saying things like that she knew would wound like the confounded little cat she was.  Gerty’s lips parted swiftly to frame the word but she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim, so flawless, so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist might have dreamed of.  She had loved him better than he knew.  Lighthearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears.  Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but with a brave effort she sparkled back in sympathy as she glanced at her new conquest for them to see.

—­O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud head flashed up.  I can throw my cap at who I like because it’s leap year.

Her words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the cooing of the ringdove, but they cut the silence icily.  There was that in her young voice that told that she was not a one to be lightly trifled with.  As for Mr Reggy with his swank and his bit of money she could just chuck him aside as if he was so much filth and never again would she cast as much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard into a dozen pieces.  And if ever after he dared to presume she could give him one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up on the spot.  Miss puny little Edy’s countenance fell to no slight extent and Gerty could see by her looking as black as thunder that she was simply in a towering rage though she hid it, the little kinnatt, because that shaft had struck home for her petty jealousy and they both knew that she was something aloof, apart, in another sphere, that she was not of them and never would be and there was somebody else too that knew it and saw it so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it.

Edy straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go and Cissy tucked in the ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too because the sandman was on his way for Master Boardman junior.  And Cissy told him too that billy winks was coming and that baby was to go deedaw and baby looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful eyes, and Cissy poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat tummy and baby, without as much as by your leave, sent up his compliments to all and sundry on to his brandnew dribbling bib.

—­O my!  Puddeny pie! protested Ciss.  He has his bib destroyed.

The slight contretemps claimed her attention but in two twos she set that little matter to rights.

Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough and Edy asked what and she was just going to tell her to catch it while it was flying but she was ever ladylike in her deportment so she simply passed it off with consummate tact by saying that that was the benediction because just then the bell rang out from the steeple over the quiet seashore because Canon O’Hanlon was up on the altar with the veil that Father Conroy put round his shoulders giving the benediction with the Blessed Sacrament in his hands.