"I'll chaperone it!" Dorothea rose to full height and balanced herself on her toes. "Miss Robin French said she couldn't go on some trip the other day because there was no chaperone; and if a lady with a mole on her chin and nearly forty has to have a chaperone, I guess you all will. Please don't stay long, Cousin Claudia. If you don't want to see mother, Uncle Winthrop, I'll talk to you, for after dinner I will have to go right straight to bed, being a brought-up-on-a-book child, and then you and Cousin Claudia will be all by yourselves. Maybe if you asked mother, though, she might let me sit up just this once. Shall I go and tell her you say so?" Laine held the curtains for Claudia to pass out. "We wouldn't be so cruel as to keep her up, would we?" he asked, and smiled in the eyes turned quickly from his. "You will not be gone long, and you won't change your dress?" "I will be back in time for dinner--and I won't change my dress. Tell Dorothea about the birds we saw this afternoon." During the hour that passed before Claudia came back Dorothea had a chance that seldom came for uninterrupted conversation, and that her uncle said little was not noticed for some time. Presently she looked up, "I don't believe you've opened your lips since Cousin Claudia went up-stairs," she said. "I don't wonder you don't know where you went this afternoon if you didn't see any more than you're hearing now. You don't know a thing I've been talking about." Laine raised his head with a start. "Oh yes, I do. You were saying--saying--" "I told you so! You didn't even know where you were! You were way off somewhere." Dorothea's voice was triumphant. "I want to ask you something, Uncle Winthrop. I won't tell anybody." She settled herself more comfortably on the stool at his feet, and crossed her arms on his knees. "Don't you think my Cousin Claudia is nice?" "Very nice." Laine took out his handkerchief, wiped his glasses, and held them to the light. "And don't you think she has a lovely mouth? When she talks I watch her like I haven't got a bit of sense." Dorothea scanned her uncle's face critically. "Your eyes are dark; and hers are light, with dark rims around the seeing part, and she just comes to your shoulder; but you look so nice together. I hope you feel sorry about the things you said about her before she came." "What things?" "That maybe her face was red and her hair was red and her hands were red, or if they weren't, maybe they were blue. Aren't you sorry?" "Very sorry, Dorothea. I was rude and tired and worried that evening. Let's forget it." "I never have told her, but I supposed you must have changed your mind, for you've been here so much lately, and gone to so many places with her that you don't like to go to, that I thought--" "Thought what, Dorothea?"