Then with a laugh she would fling down her brushes, and go and attend to her cellar. To make the men in her house comfortable, the commonplace care of a hostess, gave her unimagined pleasure. Etta and her young friends could look after themselves, being females and therefore resourceful. But the men were helpless children, even the Admiral; sometimes, she thought—especially the Admiral. Their nourishment became a matter of peculiar solicitude. She invented wants for them which she forthwith supplied. Sometimes she summoned Tommy to consultation. But when he gravely prescribed a large bath powder-puff for his uncle she upbraided him for making a jest of solemn things and dismissed him from her counsels. Her painting suffered from these inroads on her time and thoughts; but Clementina cared not. The happiness of the trustful men around her was of more consequence than the successful application of paint to canvas. Sometimes, sitting at the head of her table she would feel herself a mother to them all, and her lips would twist themselves into a new smile. Her happiest hours were those which she spent alone with Sheila and Quixtus. Since the cloud had been lifted from his soul he loved the child with a new tenderness, thus inarticulately expressing his gratitude to God for having put it into his heart to love her while the cloud hung heavy. And Clementina knew this, and invested his relations with the child in a curious sanctity. She loved to share with him the child’s affection in actual physical presence. The late afternoon was Sheila’s hour. Clementina would sit with them beneath the great cedar tree on the lawn and listen to the stories he had learned to pour into Sheila’s insatiable ears. They were mostly odds and ends of folk-lore. But now and then she suspected heterogeneous strains; and one day she called out; “Are you inventing all that, Ephraim?” He confessed with the air of a detected schoolboy. “To hear you playing the deuce with folk-lore which you regard as a strict and sacred science amazes me. From you it sounds almost immoral.” Quixtus fingered the soft curls. “What,” said he, “is all the science in the world compared with this little head?” Clementina was silent for a moment. Then she said abruptly. “You feel like that, too, do you?” Quixtus nodded and dreamed over the curls. “But what happened to the princess and the Ju-Ju man?” demanded Sheila, and Quixtus had to pursue his immoral course.