"Are there ghosts here really an' have you seen 'em?" I asked. Stretching out her hand, she swept it in a circle over the growing palace. "They are all around here--everywhere," she answered. "I saw them one night when I was running away from my father. Mamma and I hid in that big box bush down there, an' the ghosts came and walked all about us. Do you have to run away from your father, too?" For an instant I hesitated; then my pride triumphed magnificently over my truthfulness. "I ran clear out to the hill an' all the way down it," I rejoined. "Is his face red and awful?" "As red as--as an apple." "An apple ain't awful." "But he is. I wish you could see him." "Would he kill you if he caught you?" "He--he'd eat me," I panted. She sighed gravely. "I wonder if all fathers are like that?" she said. "Anyway, I don't believe yours is as bad as mine." "I'd like to know why he ain't?" I protested indignantly. Her lips quivered and went upward at the corners with a trick of expression which I found irresistible even then. "It's a pity that it's time for you to go home," she observed politely. "I reckon I can stay a little while longer," I returned. She shook her head, but I had already gone back to the unfinished palace, and as the work progressed, she forgot her hint of dismissal in watching the fairy towers. We were still absorbed in the building when her mother came down the curving stairway and into the maze of box. "It's time for you to run home now, pretty blue eyes," she said in her soft girlish way. Then catching our hands in hers, she turned with a merry laugh, and ran with us up the terraced walk. "Is your mamma as beautiful as mine?" asked Sally, when we came to a breathless stop. "She's as beautiful as--as a wax doll," I replied stoutly. "That's right," laughed the lady, stooping to kiss me. "You're a dear boy. Tell your mother I said so." She went slowly up the steps as she spoke, and when I looked back a moment later, I saw her smiling down on me between two great columns, with the snowball bush floating in the warm wind beneath her and the swallows flying low in the sunshine over her head. I had opened the side gate, when I felt a soft, furry touch on my hand, and Sally thrust the forgotten kitten into my arms. "Be good to her," she said pleadingly. "Her name's Florabella." Resisting a dastardly impulse to forswear my bargain, I tucked the mewing kitten under my coat, where it clawed me unobserved by any jeering boy in the street. Passing Mrs. Cudlip's house on my way home, I noticed at once that the window stood invitingly open, and yielding with a quaking heart to temptation, I leaned inside the vacant room, and dropped Florabella in the centre of the old lady's easy chair. Then, fearful of capture, I darted along the pavement and flung myself breathlessly across our doorstep.