For all its untidiness and confusion, its litter of boards, tools and battered paint pots, the shop was unquestionably one of the most homey corners of the Spence cottage. Its rough, unsheathed walls, mellowed to a dull buff tone, were here and there adorned with prints culled by Willie from magazines and newspapers. Likenesses of Lincoln and Roosevelt flanked the windows with an American flag above them, and a series of battleships and army scenes beneath. The inventor's taste, however, had not run entirely to patriotic subjects, for scattered along the walls, where shelves sagged with their burden of oilcans, putty, nails and fishing tackle, were a variety of nautical reproductions in color--a prize yacht heeling in the wind; a reach of rough sea whose giant combers swirled about a wreck; glimpses of marsh and dune typical of the land of the Cape dweller. An air-tight stove, the solitary defence against cold and storm, stood in the corner, and before its rusty hearth a rickety chair and an overturned soap box were suggestively placed. But perhaps what told an observer more about Willie Spence than did anything else was a bunch of rarely beautiful sabbatia blooming in a pickle bottle and a wee black kitten who disported herself unmolested among the tools cluttering the deeply scarred workbench. She was a mischievous kitten, a spoiled kitten; one who vented her caprice on everything that had motion. Did a curl of shavings drop to the ground, instantly Jezebel was at hand to catch it up in her diminutive paws; toss it from her; steal up and fall upon it again; and dragging it between her feet, roll over and over with it in a mad orgy of delight. A shadow, a string, a flicker of metal was the signal for a frolic. Let one's mood be austere as a monk's, with a single twist of her absurdly tiny body this small creature shattered its gravity to atoms. There was no such thing as dignity in Jezebel's presence. Already three times Bob Morton had lifted the mite off the table and three times back she had come, leaping in the path of his gleaming plane as if its metallic whir and glimmering reflections were designed solely for her amusement. In spite of his annoyance the man had laughed and now, stooping, he caught up the tormentor and held her aloft. "You minx!" he cried, shaking the sprite gently. "What do you think I am here for--to play with you?" The kitten blinked at him out of her round blue eyes. "You'll be getting your fur mittens cut off the next thing you know," went on Bob severely. "Scamper out of here!" He set the little creature on the floor, aimed her toward the doorway and gave her a stimulating push. With a coquettish leap headlong into the sunshine darted Jezebel, only to come suddenly into collision with a stranger who had crossed the grass and was at that instant about to enter the workshop.