He told her: "Father brought me here as a reward for making a model aëroplane. Reminds me!—I’ve got to tell you all about that. But it’s only a toy and this is the Real Thing. There’s nothing worth having in the whole world," added the unconscious philosopher "unless it’s real and true!" "Am I not real?" Patrine asked, squeezing his shoulder. "Now you are!" He said it with an effort of candour. "But when I saw you a minute ago, I wasn’t—quite sure." He glanced up at her and asked shyly: "Why are you different since you have been away in Paris?" "Different, how different?" She whipped her hand from his shoulder. Her black eyebrows knitted, and her face stiffened into the strange mask that had puzzled him, under the scrutiny of his clear blue eyes. "Do I seem changed?" she queried. And Bawne answered: "A little. I was afraid at first you were somebody else, because of"—he said it shyly—"because of your hair." "My hair?" she repeated blankly, and then said awkwardly: "The air of Paris did that, darling, but it will soon be its old colour again!" "Will it ever be just like it was before?" asked Bawne, looking innocently up at her, and something broke in Patrine’s heart just then. She gave a sudden gasping sigh, and a sudden spate of tears rolled over her thick underlids, streamed down her pale cheeks, and fell upon her broad bosom, heaving under its thin covering of filmy white voile. "Pat! You’re—crying!" Bawne had never yet seen his friend weep, and he was wrung between pity and bewilderment. "Who has vexed you? Who has been hurting you?" he begged, and she answered brokenly: "No one! ... Someone.... It doesn’t matter!" adding: "Would you punch him, if anyone had—done as you say?" "_Wouldn’t_ I?" "My sweet!" Her arm went round his slight, square shoulders. She doted on the little amber freckles on his pure, healthy skin, the little drake’s tail of silky red-brown hair at the nape of his brown neck, the half-shy, half-bold curve of his mouth as he smiled, the blue sparkle of his eye glancing sidewise up at her. She found in the pure warmth and sweetness of the slight young body leaning against her, a healing, comforting balm. "Why aren’t you my little brother, Bawne?" she said, hugging him closer. He answered after an instant’s thought: "If my mother could be your mother too, it would be jolly! Not unless! ..." He was not going to take on Mildred for anybody. Patrine sighed pensively. "That’s what I used to cry for when I was a little pig-tailed girl, my sonny. More than anything I wanted to belong to Aunt Lynette. But she’s so young—only thirty-three. She couldn’t be my mother." "No." His eyes considered her face gravely. "Of course not. You’re far too old. How old are you, Cousin Pat?" "How old am I?" A shudder went through her. "Nineteen in August. And I feel about a hundred and one."