"Oh, don't!" pleaded Dare. "You only prejudice my chances." He leaned over her chair, and placed the slice of cake in the chubby hand which opened and closed upon it shyly. "I'm awfully fond of cake too, Pamela," he said. "You eat that piece, and I'll eat a piece; and we'll see who gets through first." "You'll ruin her digestion," Pamela the elder observed with smiling reproof, while Pamela the younger set her small teeth in the cake and munched it with evident appreciation. While she ate, she kept a suspicious but interested eye on the stranger, who was eating cake also with apparent whole-hearted enjoyment. To Pamela the second's delight the stranger's slice failed to disappear as rapidly as her own. "You've won," he cried, as the last mouthful was crammed with unfair haste upon its unmasticated predecessor. Pamela the second licked her small fingers and laughed because the stranger was beaten and looked so sorry about it too. She hoped he was going to cry. "Let's try again," he suggested, and cut a second and smaller slice. Pamela scrambled down from her mother's lap and approached near to him, leaning with her small sticky hands on his knees, and her greedy blue eyes on the cake. "Try again!" she repeated delightedly, and held out an eager hand. "It is just as well," remarked Pamela the first, "that this doesn't happen often." She met his eyes over the child's bright head and returned their quiet smile. In making his bid for baby favours he was gaining more than he guessed. Before the second piece of cake was finished, Pamela the second was seated on his knee; and because he was badly beaten this time also, and seemed to mind his defeat even more than before, she rested her head contentedly against his sleeve, and evinced entire satisfaction at his expressions of disappointment. Pamela the second was hard-hearted and crowed loudly over her success. "I think you may claim to have won this time," said Pamela the first, watching the child's friendly response to his overtures with pleased, surprised eyes. He caught the reference. "Through another defeat," he said, "yes." "It is a greater victory than you imagine," she added. "I have never known her won over by your sex before. You are accustomed to children?" "Not accustomed,--little people don't come my way; but I'm in sympathy with them. My tastes are infantile, you see." He rose shortly afterwards and took his departure. Pamela the second had gone off in pursuit of other diversion: Pamela the first accompanied him to the gate. "I am sorry you are going back so soon," she said as she shook hands with him. "I don't feel as though we were new acquaintances. I seem to know you quite well." "Five years," he returned... "I regard the friendship as dating from then. We are quite old friends really."