"You don't expect me to disagree with that, do you?" her brother had just time enough to ask before their hostess appeared again complete with tray, glasses, and a filled pitcher which gave forth the refreshing sound of clinking ice. And after her paraded an old friend of theirs, tail proudly erect. "There's our cat!" cried Ricky. Val snapped his fingers. "Here, Satan." After staring round-eyed at both of them, the cat crossed casually to the settee and proceeded to sharpen his claws. "Well, I like that! After I shared my bed with the brute, even though I didn't know it until the next morning," Val exploded. "Why, where did you meet Cinders?" asked Miss Biglow as she put down the tray. "He came to us the first night we were at Pirate's Haven," explained Ricky. "I thought he was a ghost or something when he scratched at the back door." "So that's where he was. He used to go over to the Harrisons' for meals a lot. When I'm working I don't keep very regular hours and he doesn't like to be neglected. Come here, Cinders, and make your manners." Replying to her invitation with an insolent flirt of his tail, Cinders, whom Val continued obstinately to regard as "Satan," disappeared around the corner of the balcony. Charity Biglow looked at them solemnly. "So obedient," she observed; "just like a child." "Are you an artist, too?" Ricky asked as she put down her glass. Miss Biglow's face wrinkled into a grimace. "My critics say not. I manage to provide daily bread and sometimes a slice of cake by doing illustrations for action stories. And then once in a while I labor for the good of my soul and try to produce something my more charitable friends advise me to send to a show." "May--may we see some of them--the pictures, I mean?" inquired Ricky timidly. "If you can bear it. I use the side balcony for a workshop in this kind of weather. I'm working on a picture now, something more ambitious than I usually attempt in heat of this sort. But my model didn't show up this morning so I'm at a loose end." She led them around the corner where Satan had disappeared and pointed to a table with a sketching board at one end, several canvases leaning face against the house, and an easel covered with a clean strip of linen. "My workshop. A trifle untidy, but then I am an untidy person. I'm expecting an order so I'm just whiling away my time working on an idea of my own until it comes." Ricky touched the strip of covering across the canvas on the easel. "May I?" she asked. "Yes. It might be a help, getting some other person's reaction to the thing. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do when I started but I don't think it's turning out to be what I planned." Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas. [Illustration: _Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas._] "But that is he!" he exclaimed. Charity Biglow turned to the boy. "And what do you mean--" "That's the boy I found in the garden, Ricky!"