"Now, don't jump at him," said Mr. Grey, who understood and loved all animals. "Remember, a cat is the most nervous creature on earth, and this one is dreadfully frightened." "I've often petted him at Mrs. Bonell's; he may remember me," said Oswyth. "Let me take him." Very gently she raised the downy creature, who immediately put his forepaws around her neck and clung to her, his poor little heart thumping wildly against Wythie's throat. "Dear Billy, you gentle, sweet, little kitten," Wythie murmured, sitting down to rock him, while Rob and Prue looked on longingly. "You don't object, Lady Grey?" said Mr. Grey. "He's so much of a pet already, and so very white, he can't bother you." "Why, you know, Sylvester, I'm quite as much of a goose about pets as the children--or as you are," laughed Mrs. Grey, and so Billy was adopted. "I'd like to call him Kiku--that's Japanese for chrysanthemum. I wonder if Mrs. Bonell would mind? It would be so lovely to say: 'O Kiku-san,' when we called him," said Rob. "She would never mind," said Prue, while Wythie began to sing to the old lullaby tune of Greenville: "O Billy-san, O Kiku-Billy-san; O Kiku-san, O Kiku-Billy-san." As she rocked to and fro in perfect content, frightened, puzzled little Billy shut his eyes and clung to her, his heart beating less tumultuously as he began to realize that here, too, were gentle hearts and hands. "I want you when you can come, Rob, my son," said Mr. Grey, going toward the room which had been set apart for his special uses. It was a well-worn, but well-wearing, joke between Roberta and her father that she was his son Rob, his mainstay and dependence. "And I'd like to be able to see you when you come," he added, as a parting shot. "Just now you are in partial eclipse from blacking." Rob laughed and ran upstairs. Presently she returned, and went to her father's room, carefully closing the door behind her. It was a curious place, a mixture of study, library, workshop, and laboratory. It had been built for the kitchen of the little grey house when it was new, a hundred years ago. Its walls were wainscoted to half their height in panels of grained and varnished wood. The fireplace was made of narrow panels, with little cupboards above the high, narrow, wooden mantelpiece, and the handles of these cupboard-doors were tiny brass knobs. The old rush-bottomed chairs sitting around the walls, and the tables as well, were littered with papers. Between the windows, where the light was strongest, sat a common kitchen table, and on it stood a model of the bricquette machine, and models of its component parts. Two tall bookcases, one filled with scientific and mechanical books, the other with novels, essays, and poetry, stood opposite these models, and across the room on another table standing close to the sink and small portable stove, were scattered chemical apparatus.