"Floss, you naughty child, what are you screaming in that dreadful way for? Why are you not in bed? I told you to run upstairs as soon as we came out of the dining-room? What _is_ the matter?" exclaimed Gertrude, at no loss to pitch upon the invisible offender. There was no answer for a minute. Then, a ball consisting of white muslin, blue ribbons, shaggy hair and bare legs, seemed to roll out from under a sofa into the middles of the room, when it shook itself into form, and stood erect, red-faced and defiant. "Quin pulled my hair," was all the explanation it vouchsafed. Quintin came forward from behind the curtains to answer for himself. "Well, and if I did, I'd like to know who bit and scratched and kicked?" he exclaimed, wrathfully. "'Cos you said you'd tell I was hiding in the curtains; tell-tale boy," returned Floss, with supreme contempt. "And why were you hiding in the curtains? Why didn't you go up to bed when I sent you?" demanded her mother. "Quin said there was a bear behind the glass door in the hall, and I was fwightened it would eat me," replied Floss, her defiance subsiding. "I only said bears eat naughty children. It says so in the Bible," said Quin, virtuously. Adelaide began to laugh. "How silly you are!" thought Roma, regretfully. "I fear Beauchamp will soon be bored by you." But she liked the girl better when she rose from her seat, and asked Gertrude if she might not convoy poor Floss across the dreaded hall. It was more than Roma would have troubled herself to do: she looked upon all children as necessary evils, and considered her niece a peculiarly aggravated form of the infliction. Gertrude was profuse in her thanks, but Floss hung back. "I don't like you," she said calmly, looking up into Miss Chancellor's face. "You're too fat, and you've got stawey eyes." Adelaide laughed again, but this time more faintly. An ominous frown darkened Mrs Eyrecourt's face. "You naughty, naughty, rude child," she began, sternly. Quintin's better feelings were aroused. "I'll take her upstairs, mamma. Come, Floss," and, already frightened at her own audacity, the cross-grained little mortal clutched at her brother's hand, and the two left the room together. Upstairs Quin read Floss a lecture on the enormity of her offence. Overcome by his goodness in escorting her to the nursery, she hugged him vehemently-- getting into fresh disgrace for crushing his collar; but maintained stoutly that "the new young lady wasn't nice or pretty at all, not the least tiny bit." "What a nice boy Quintin is, and so handsome," began Miss Chancellor, gushingly. "Yes," said Roma, to whom the remark was addressed; "he's not a bad child, as children go. I detest children." Adelaide looked shocked. "_Do_ you?" she exclaimed. "Well, of course," she went on, as if desirous of modifying her evident disapproval, "I daresay it makes a difference when one has not had younger brothers and sisters."