Startled, she lifted up her arms and dropped Dandy, who slithered down her dress and sought a morose shelter under the table. “My dear John!” she exclaimed. “I'm very sorry; I did n't mean to use strong language,” said he, putting his hands to his ears. “It's all that infernal canary.” “Oh, poor Dickie! Don't you like to hear Dickie sing? He sings so beautifully. The gas-man was here the other day and said that, if I liked, he would enter him for a competition, and he was sure he would get first prize. But if you don't like to hear him, dear--though I really can't understand why--I can easily make him stop.” She drew a white napkin from the drawer of the table on which the cage was placed and threw it over the top. The feathered steam-whistle swallowed his din in an angry gurgle or two and became silent “Poor Dickie, he thinks it 's a snowstorm! What were we talking about, John? Do sit down.” John resumed his seat on the slippery couch, and Miss Lindon, having snatched Dandy from his lair, sat by his side, depositing the dog between them. “You asked me what I had been doing for the last few years,” said he. “Ah, yes. That 's why I wrote to you yesterday, dear.” She had written to him, in fact, every month for many years, long, foolish letters in which everything was futile save the genuine affection underlying them, and more often than not John had taken them as read and pitched them into the waste-paper basket. His few perfunctory replies, however, had been treasured and neatly docketed and pigeon-holed in the bureau in her bedroom, together with the rest of her family archives and other precious documents. Among them was a famous recipe for taking mulberry stains out of satin. That she prized inordinately. “I should n't like to drift apart from dear Ellen's boy,” she said with a smile. “And I should n't like to lose touch with you, my dear aunt,” said John, with more graciousness. “And that is why I've come to see you to-day. I've had rather a bad time lately.” “I know--that awful case in the papers.” She shivered. “Don't let us talk of it. You must try to forget it. I wrote to you how shocked I was. I asked you to come and stay with me, and said I would do what I could to comfort you. I believe in the ties of kinship, my dear, and I did n't like to think of you bearing your trouble alone.” “That was very kind indeed of you,” said John, who had missed the invitation hidden away in the wilderness of the hastily scanned sixteen-page letter. He flushed beneath his dark skin, aware of rudeness. After all, when a lady invites you to her house, it is boorish to ignore the offered hospitality. It is a slight for which one can scarcely apologize. But she evidently bore him no malice.