The meal was rather a silent one.  Kitty was decidedly sulky, Dora thoughtful, and Karl a little bitter in his forced gayety; so that Sunshine, sensitive as a mimosa, ate but little, and, creeping close to Dora’s side as they rose from the table, whispered,—­

“What’s the reason it isn’t happier, Dora?”

“Aren’t you happy, pet?  Come and help me wash the teacups, and tell me how the kitties do to-day.  Have you given them their milk?”

“I suppose you can do up these dishes without me.  I got tea all alone; and I’d like to take my turn at a walk, or something pleasant, now,” said Kitty crossly.

“Yes, do, Kitty.  Dolce and I will do all that is to be done.  It isn’t much, because you always clear up as you go along,” said Dora.

“There’s no need of leaving every thing round, the way some folks do.  Dolly, I do wish you’d set up your chair when you’ve done with it; and here’s a mess of stuff”—­

“Oh, don’t throw it away, Kitty!  It’s my moss; and I’m going to make the pussies a house of stones, and have it grow all over moss.  Dora said I might—­Oh, oh! you’re real naughty and ugly now, Kitty Windsor; and I sha’n’t love you, and Argus shall bite you”—­

But Kitty, with a contemptuous laugh, was already walking away, taking especial pains to tread upon the bits of bright moss as they lay scattered along the path.

“Dora, see!  I do hate-no, I dislike-Kitty, just as hard as I can; and I can’t get any more pretty moss”—­

The child was crying passionately; and Dora left every thing to take her in her arms, and soothe and quiet her.

“Aunt Kitty is very neat and nice, little Sunshine; and the moss has earth clinging to it that might drop on the floor; and, besides, it takes up room, and we have so little,—­hardly more than a mouse has in its nest.  Oh!  I never told you how I found a whole nest of mice in one of my slippers once,—­six little tiny fellows, no bigger than your thumb; and every one with two little black, beady eyes, and a funny little tail.”

“When was it?  When you was a little teenty girl, like me?  And was you afraid of the big mouse?  What did you do with them?”

“Come, wipe the teaspoons, and I will tell you,” said Dora, going back to her work; and, the April cloud having passed, the Sunshine was as bright as ever.

Karl, behind his newspaper, heard, saw, and understood the whole; and his mental comment might have seemed to some hearers but little connected with the scene that called it forth.  It was simply,—­

“Confound old Brown!”

Kitty, meantime, had walked rapidly towards the wood; but though the sunset-clouds were gorgeous, the lights and shadows of the forest rare and shifting, and the birds jubilant in their evening song, she saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, except the tumult in her own heart.

For, in the recesses of the wood, she paused, and throwing herself upon the ground, her face hidden upon her arms, gave way to a paroxysm of tears.  Then, rising to her feet as suddenly, she paced up and down, her hands clinched before her, her black brows knit, and her mouth hard and sullen.