They both bent and examined the creamy shining linen with its coarse silky weave and the large roughened threads that Vila scarcely dared to touch with her fingers all dirty from the precious stones. Patricia graciously let them touch and see until, gently but with a final dignity, she drew the cloth out of their fingers. “Now you mustn’t touch me any more.” The boys giggled again at this, admiring but feeling abashed. A striped kitten came suddenly into sight at a little distance--became motionless, saw them--and flattened and slid under the cover of the plants in the garden. Patricia gave a little cry. Her face bloomed into brightness. “Oh! Do you have a kitty?” “A cat! Gee!” They all laughed. “_One_ cat! I bet we got seventeen.” “Really seventeen kitties? Did your father buy them all for you?” “Buy them!” The boys shouted with laughter. “Gee, you don’t buy cats!” “Oh, you do,” Patricia told them, shocked. “They cost twenty-five dollars, the kitties that sit in the window in the shop.” “Twenty-five dollars! Pay twenty-five dollars for a _cat_!” _Cats_, when you had to drown half of ’em and couldn’t hardly give the others away! The boys were hilarious with laughter over such ignorance. Leone couldn’t help knowing that Patricia was ignorant, too. But she gave the boys a hurt, indignant, silencing look--it was mean of them to laugh at Patricia when she didn’t know! Anyway, she was so little. Leone put her arm around Patricia, in warm protection. “But they do!” Patricia’s eyes were large and tearful and her soft little lips were quivering. It was dreadful to have these children not believe her, and she couldn’t understand it. “Some of them cost a hundred dollars!” “Oh, gee!” the boys began. “Maybe some of them _do_,” Leone said quickly. “You don’t know everything in the world, Marvin Sieverson.” She knew, of course, that cats couldn’t--but then, she wasn’t going to have the boys make fun of Patricia. “Come on now, Patricia,” she pleaded. “We’ll go and see our kitties. Shall we?” The boys watched anxiously. They didn’t want Patricia to be mad at them. They wanted to take her out to the barn and have her look at everything. She considered. Her eyes were still large and mournful and a very dark violet. At last she nodded her head, held out her hands trustingly to Leone to be helped from the grass, smoothed down her skirts--and the whole tribe went running off together. * * * * *