When strangers were first introduced to Pixie O'Shaughnessy they invariably catalogued her as a plain-looking girl; when they had known her for an hour they began to feel that they had been mistaken, and at the end of a week they would have been prepared to quarrel with their best friend if he had echoed their own first judgment. The charm of her personality soon overpowered the physical deficiency. Stanor Vaughan was as yet too young and prosperous to realise the real reason of Pixie's attraction. He decided that it was attributable to her trim, jaunty little figure and the unusual fashion in which she dressed her hair. Also she wore a shade of bright flame-coloured silk which made a special appeal to his artistic eye, and he approved of the simple, graceful fashion of its cut. "Looks as if she'd had enough stuff!" he said to himself, with all a man's dislike of the prevailing hobble. He pondered how to open the conversation, asking himself uneasily what punishment the girl would award him for his _faux pas_ of the afternoon. Would she be haughty? She didn't look the kind of little thing to be haughty! Would she be cold and aloof? Somehow, glancing at the irregular, piquant little profile, he could not imagine her aloof. Would she snap? Ah! Now he was not so certain. He saw distinct possibilities of snap, and then, just as he determined that he really must make the plunge and get it over, Pixie leaned confidentially toward him and said below her breath-- "_Please_ talk! Make a start--any start--and I'll go on. ... It's your place to begin." "Er--er--" stammered Stanor, and promptly forgot every subject of conversation under the sun. He stared back into the girl's face, met her honest eyes, and was seized with an impulse of confession. "Before I say anything else, I--I ought to apologise, Miss O'Shaughnessy. I'm most abominably ashamed. I'm afraid you overheard my--er--er--w-what I said to Miss Ward at tea--" "Of course I heard," said Pixie, staring. "What could you expect? Not four yards away, and a great bass voice! I'm not _deaf_. But there's no need to feel sorry. I thought you put it very nicely, myself!" "Nicely!" He stared in amaze. "_Nicely_! How could you possibly--" "You said I had given Esmeralda my share. I'd never once looked at it in that way; neither had any one else. And it's _so soothing_. It gives me a sort of credit, don't you see, as well as a pride." She was speaking honestly, transparently honestly; it was impossible to doubt that, with her clear eyes beaming upon him, her lips curling back in laughter from her small white teeth. There was not one sign of rancour, of offence, of natural girlish vanity suffering beneath a blow.