"Do you, His Grand?" inquired Ruth. "Because if you do, I must certainly stay where I am, so that I can tuck under me, very neatly, this rip in my skirt, which Miss Billy has not yet seen. Petie Trone, Esq., shake hands with the lady." The dog, a small black-and-tan terrier, was reposing on the rug beside Ruth; upon hearing her command, he trotted across to the visitor, and offered a tiny paw. "Dear little fellow," said Miss Breeze, bending, and shaking it gently. "His Grand must allow that he looks extremely well?" For the circle of friends had ended by accepting the legend (invented by Ruth) that Mrs. Franklin was Petie Trone's grandmother, or "His Grand." The only person who still held out against this title was Genevieve, the daughter-in-law; Mrs. Franklin the younger thought that the name was ridiculous. Her husband's family seemed to her incomprehensibly silly about their pets. Miss Wilhelmina Breeze was thirty-five; but no one would have thought so from her fair pink-and-white complexion, and young, innocent eyes. From her earliest years she had longed to hear herself called "Wilhelmina." But the longing was almost never gratified; the boyish name given to her in joke when she was a baby had clung to her with the usual fatal tenacity. "Miss Billy, have you seen mother to-day?" Dolly inquired. "Not until now," answered the visitor, surprised. "Well, then, have you thought of mastodons?" "Certainly I have; and if you yourself, Dolly, would think more seriously of the whole subject, the primeval world--you would soon be as fascinated with it as I am. Imagine one of those vast extinct animals, Dolly, lifting his neck up a hill to nibble the trees on its top!" said Miss Breeze with enthusiasm. "And birds as large as chapels flying through the air! Probably they sang, those birds. What sort of voices do you suppose they had? The cave-lion was twenty-nine feet high. The horned tryceratops was seventy-five feet long! It elevates the mind even to think of them." "You see, His Grand, that she _has_ thought of mastodons," commented Dolly. "Your unexpected mention of them, therefore, is plainly the influence of her mind acting upon yours from a distance--the distance of the Old North Hotel." "Have you really thought of them, dear Mrs. Franklin? And do you believe there can be such a thing as the conscious--I mean, of course, _un_conscious--influence of one mind upon another?" inquired Miss Billy, her face betraying a delighted excitement. "No, no; it's only Dolly's nonsense," answered Mrs. Franklin. "It's easy to say nonsense, His Grand. But how, then, do you account for the utterances of my planchette?" demanded Dolly, wagging her head triumphantly.