The sun had risen when Gavin Brice awoke.  Apart from stiffness and a very sore head his inured system was little the worse for the evening’s misadventures.  A cold shower and a rubdown and a shave in the adjoining bathroom. cleared away the last mists from his brain.

He dressed quickly, glanced at his watch and saw the hour was not quite seven.  Then he faced his bedroom door and hesitated.

“If he’s a born idiot,” he mused. “it’s still locked.  If he isn’t it’s unlocked and the key has been taken away.  I’ve made noise enough while I was dressing.”

He turned the knob.  The door opened readily.  The key was gone.  In the hallway outside the room and staring up at him from widely shallow green eyes. sat Simon Cameron, the big Persian cat.

“That’s a Persian all over.  Simon my friend,” said Brice, stooping down to scratch the cat’s furry head in greeting.  “A Persian will sit for hours in front of any door that’s got a stranger behind it.  And he’ll show more flattering affection for a stranger than for any one he’s known all his life.  Isn’t that true.  Simon?”

By way of response. the big cat rubbed himself luxuriously against the man’s shins, purring loudly.  Then, at a single lithe spring he was on Gavin’s shoulder, making queer little whistling noises and rubbing his head lovingly against Brice’s cheek.  Gavin made his way downstairs the cat still clinging to his shoulder, fanning his face with a swishing gray foxlike tail, digging curved claws back and forth into the cloth of his shabby coat, and purring like a distant railroad train.

Only when they reached the lower hallway did the cat jump from his shoulder and with a flying leap land on the top of a nearby bookcase.  There, luxuriously, Simon Cameron stretched himself out in a shaft of sunlight, and prepared for a nap.

Brice went on to the veranda.  On the lawn, scarce fifty feet away, Claire was gathering flowers for the breakfast table.  Very sweet and dainty was she in the flood of morning sunshine, her white dress and her burnished hair giving back waves of radiance from the sun’s strong beams.

At her side walked Bobby Burns.  But, on first sound of Brice’s step on the porch, the collie looked up and saw him.  With a joyous bark of welcome Bobby came dashing across the lawn and up the steps.  Leaping and gamboling around Gavin. he set the echoes ringing with a series of trumpet-barks.  The man paused to pet his adorer and to say a word of friendliness, then ran down the steps toward Claire who was advancing to meet him.  Her arms were full of scarlet and golden blossoms.

“Are you better?” she called, noting the bandage on his head had been replaced by a neat strip of plaster.  “I hoped you’d sleep longer.  Bobby Burns ran up to your room and scratched at the door as soon as I let him into the house this morning.  But I made him come away again.  Are—­”