The Atom stared out of the window. Jim, having, with a good deal of ingenuity, extricated a curtain hook, dropped it on her head. She shook it off impatiently. Jim watched, peering impishly over the curtain rail. "I’m awfully sorry, asthore,"—Denis pulled her pig-tail lovingly—"shall I put you in my pocket?" "I will hear you speak," the Atom said. "Well, I’ll recite my speech to you and Jim here. Nell was saying she wishes you’d take her place." "Don’t be silly, Denis." A measured step approached the door. "Aunt Kezia—and Jim not in his cage!" he ejaculated, and strode to the door. He glanced back at Jim—a dim little outline in the curtain. "If only he stays there!" He swung out on to the landing, nearly upsetting Miss Kezia. "I wish to see Molly," she said. "Molly? She’s not in there, Aunt Kezia." "One of my boots is missing. I conclude that Molly, for some purpose of her own, has taken it." She moved towards him and the door. "Don’t you trouble," he besought her; "you go and finish getting ready. I’ll find Molly and ask her." "I prefer to look for myself." She entered the Stronghold and gazed around. Jim peered inquisitively at her over the curtain top. Denis frowned at him and shook his head. "There is my boot!" Miss Kezia dragged a large and solid boot from beneath a chair. "Well!" she ejaculated, and the amount of indignation she managed to compress into that one word was terrific. She held up the boot—there was not a button left on it. But on the floor, ranged in a neat little line, sat ten black buttons. The absolute regularity of the line, the precision and neatness, somehow seemed to aggravate the offence. "I—I would like to _whip_ Molly!" Miss Kezia’s accents were not so judicial as usual; there was a hurried, almost a pathetic, note about them. She was at a loss. "I will find Molly," she said with dire meaning, and stalked towards the door. "I’ll find her for you!" Denis exclaimed, and brushed past her. When the door was shut, Sheila Pat, with a smile for what had occurred, went back to the window and her thoughts. Jim crept stealthily down the curtain and across to the boot buttons, which had been scattered by Miss Kezia’s angry toe. He picked them up, one by one, and laid them in a neat little row again. Then he sat and regarded them with his head on one side. Sheila Pat’s solitude was invaded presently by a very injured and tearful Molly. "She thinks I’m mad! And he isn’t worth it! I’m to—to sew them all on myself! I can’t!"