But when, later, she wandered into the front parlour, she couldn't help wishing it were a “drawing-room.” And when she moved on out to the side porch, she viewed with a certain discontent the peaceful scene before her. Usually she had loved the side porch at the sunset hour: the close fragrance of honeysuckles which screened one end, the stretch of slick green grass and the nasturtium bed aflame like an unstirring fire, the trees rustling softly in the evening breeze--yes, she loved it all for the very tranquillity, the poignant tranquillity of it. But that was before she realized there were in the world vast swards that swept beyond pleasure-grounds (what WERE “pleasure-grounds”?), past laughing brooklets and gurgling streams, on to the Park where roamed herds of many-antlered deer and where mighty oaks flung their arms far and wide; while mayhap, on a topmost branch, a crow swayed and swung as the soft wind rushed by, making an inky blot upon the brilliant green, as if it were a patch upon the alabaster cheek of some court belle... Oh, enchanting! But there were no vast swards nor pleasure-grounds nor Parks of antlered deer in Cherryvale. Then Poppylinda, the majestic black cat, trod up the steps of the porch and rubbed herself against her mistress's foot, as if saying, “Anyhow, I'm here!” Missy reached down and lifted Poppy to her lap. She adored Poppy; but she couldn't help reflecting that a Skye terrier (though she had never seen one) was a more distinguished kind of pet than a black cat. A black cat was--well, bourgeois (the last rhyming with “boys”). Airy fairy Lilian's pet was a Skye. It was named Fifine, and was very frisky. Lilian, as she sat exchanging sprightly badinage with her many admirers, was wont to sit with her hand perdu beneath the silky Fifine in her lap. “No, no, Fifine! Down, sir!” murmured Missy absently. Poppy, otherwise immobile, blinked upward an inquiring gaze. “Naughty Fifine! You MUST not kiss my fingers, sir!” Poppy blinked again. Who might this invisible Fifine be? Her mistress was conversing in a very strange manner; and the strangest part of it was that she was looking straight into Poppy's own eyes. Poppy didn't know it, but her name was no longer Poppylinda. It was Fifine. That night Missy went to bed in her own little room in Cherryvale; but, strange as it may seem to you, she spent the hours till waking far across the sea, in a manor-house in baronial England. After that, for a considerable period, only the body, the husk of her, resided in Cherryvale; the spirit, the pulsing part of her, was in the land of her dreams. Events came and passed and left her unmarked. Even the Evans elopement brought no thrill; the affair of a youth who clerks in a bank and a girl who works in a post office is tame business to one who has been participating in the panoplied romances of the high-born.