Little Anne fell on Kit with vehement welcome. She gave him her hand with such desire in her eyes to give him more that Kit took it, kissing her cheek. “I’m just as glad as I can be that you came!” declared little Anne. “I’d like to have you come just purp’sly to see me. You didn’t, did you?” “I came because I was rather down at the heels, in my mind, little Anne, and this is headquarters for getting reshod,” said Kit, smiling on the child, but glancing toward Anne Dallas, “and you’re no small part of the Berkley cheer. I counted on you to brace me up. Some day, if you’ll let me, I’ll come to see you, just _you_, ask for _you_, and get shown in to see _you_. How’s that?” “Beautiful!” sighed little Anne. “No one ever came to see me like that--not yet.” “Why should you be cast down, Kit?” asked Joan with her motherly young smile. “I always think of you as the Fortunate Youth, like Harry Warrington.” “Say, Joan, that’s a better hit than you aimed to make!” cried Kit. “Harry Warrington wasn’t all around fortunate, and when he’d ceased to be a youth he must have been conscious of what he’d missed.” Joan had a glimmer of a suspicion of the true cause of Kit’s depression; she glanced at Anne Dallas with the light of her suspicion in her eyes, but Anne said unconsciously: “What nice old fogies you are to be so familiar with your Thackeray! I shouldn’t catch your allusion but that I read ‛The Virginians’ to Mr. Latham quite lately. And I found Thackeray greater, even in that book, than any one else.” “You’ll be all right, Kit; you need not worry. As long as you see straight it will be all right with you. Harry Warrington was a stupid youth,” said Joan, hedging for safety, being uncertain of her ground. “I suspect all youths are stupid,” said Kit. “My aunt considers me so. I’ve just had a lecture on The Whole Duty of Man, and it depressed me. The great A stands for autocrat, as well as Anne.” Little Anne clapped her hands and jumped up and down, crying: “Great A--your aunt! Little A--me! Bouncing B--that’s Babs; look how she jounces herself up and down! There’s no cat in the cupboard who can’t see, though!” “There’s a Kit in the cupboard, shut up with the mice!” Kit shouted the words on his explosive laugh. “And the great A certainly thinks he’s blind! Say, little Anne, Mother Goose with Anne sauce isn’t half bad!” “It’s fine!” little Anne approved him. “Though I don’t exactly understand the joke. We’ve so many Annes in Cleavedge that it’s--do you know what? An Anthology. That’s what Peter-two said. Cleavedge is an Anthology. Peter made that joke; it’s a pun; Peter-two likes puns.” “You don’t know what that means,” said Kit. “I do! I do, too!” little Anne flatly contradicted him, taking a running leap that landed her sharp little knees on Kit’s legs and made him wince. “An Anthology’s a book with lots of things collected into it, like poetry, or fairy stories, or--oh, things that you can put together in one book. I do know!”