"I’m growing nervey in my old age! If I believed in presentiments, I should think something horrid was going to happen. I feel presentimenty." Of course she did not believe in presentiments; she reminded herself so several times that morning. Just as, of course, she wasn’t the least bit superstitious. She knew a great many of her country-people were, but not she! When she found herself inadvertently walking beneath a ladder, she laughed. "If I were superstitious, I should feel horrid that I had done that!" At luncheon Denis helped her to salt, with a mischievous grin as he did it. "I shall bring you sorrow now, old girl!" he murmured, "unless," his eyes twinkling, "you throw some over your left shoulder, you know." "It’s likely I would!" said Nell. She fell to thinking how funny it was that all on that one day she had a presentiment, first of all, that something bad was going to happen; then she walked beneath a ladder, and then Denis helped her to salt. If she were superstitious, how uneasy she would be! But she wasn’t, so it didn’t matter. Miss Kezia picked up a letter that had come just then. Molly went a fiery red, glanced at Nell, then blurted out, jumping up and knocking her chair over, "Do let me fetch your spectacles, Aunt Kezia!" Miss Kezia turned her head slowly and looked at her, with a good deal of offence. "I never wear spectacles, Molly; I do not require them. Pray sit down." "Oh!" gasped Molly, and sat down, covered with confusion. "I do not know," pursued Miss Kezia, "if you intended to be impertinent. If so, it was very feeble." The whole table except Molly and her aunt were too convulsed to offer the former any aid. Molly sat and stared into her plate, the fiery red of face and neck refusing to die down. In books, she reflected miserably, the aunts always wore spectacles. After luncheon, when Denis had gone back to the bank, Nell tried to go on with a painting she was doing of Mrs. Barclay’s tabby cat. "To think that I should have come to cats! To be so hard up for models that I have to seek refuge in a _cat_! Oh, what a great, stupid, moon face you’ve got, Tim! K.K., come here. You needn’t be jealous, my dear. You’re worth all the cats in the world." Kate Kearney refused to budge. She sat in a corner, her back to the room. It was her way of showing dignified disapproval. Denis called it sulks. Poor K.K.—she had been called sternly to order when she teased the cat. No one seemed to object to the cat’s swearing at her. Very well. It was an unjust world. She sat and presented the room with a beautiful black shiny back and long drooping ears.