At this moment Miss Croly came in softly with the milk-posset. Madam Flynt took it with an absent-minded, "Thanks, Cornelia!" drank it off, then paused with a look of discomfiture. "I told you I wouldn't take it!" she said sharply. "Your natural good sense"--murmured Miss Croly with a glance at the empty cup--"the Doctor recommended----" "Hang the Doctor! and you, too!" exclaimed Madam Flynt. "You--you--you--_go away_, Cornelia Croly! go and"--Miss Croly was already at the door, aggressive meekness in every line of face and figure--"and bring me my smelling-salts, if you will have the goodness!" The last words were spoken with austere dignity: but, the door once closed, Madam Flynt's sense of humor was too much for her. Her lips began to twitch, her eyes to twinkle even under the bent brows of anger. She struggled for a moment, then burst into a hearty fit of laughter. "The old fox!" she cried. "She gets the better of me every time! every time, Mary! She's chuckling to herself now, but she'll come in as sober as--thank you, Cornelia! I hope you haven't over-exerted yourself!" as Miss Croly, still aggressively meek, retired to a corner with her rainbow scarf. Dear me! yes, she always sat in that uncomfortable chair when they had had a tiff. "What was I saying, my dear?" Madam Flynt rubbed her nose with her silver spectacle-case, and threw a vexed glance toward the corner. "Oh, yes, Johanna! like the Pyramids, my dear, I assure you! I don't mean in looks" (I had a moment's vision of Cheops with a nightcap tilted over his apex) "she looks like a picture--but in permanence. Sits up morning and evening to have her bed made: and, as Cornelia Croly says, in some mysterious way it makes me feel younger just to look at her. Cornelia, stop being ridiculous, and come out of that corner. I didn't really swear at you, though you are enough to make one." Seeing reconciliation imminent, I slipped away, to find my Kitty in the stable. My Kitty! I was just as foolish about her as any one else. I had not seen her since all the happenings, but by and by we were quiet and comfortable, and combing out Pilot's beautiful mane, as if we had never been away, either of us. Kitty confided to me that she was awaiting John Tucker's return in trepidation, not to say terror. She had bought a new horse, bought it all by herself, without John Tucker's seeing it. That is, not actually bought it, but taken it on trial. "How could I? Mary, I don't know! We had decided that we must have a third horse. The business is growing so, my dear! Mr. Chanter's horse is lame, and I have to take the dear man on his out-of-town calls. _Such_ fun! well, this morning--oh! oh! Mary! here is John Tucker. Now I must confess to him. Stay by me, won't you?"