“I might be Chicot, the loyal friend, without the cap and bells. I am a dull dog.” She looked out of the window and laughed somewhat bitterly. “I think you are a great deal too good to have anything to do with any of us.” “It pleases you to talk arrant nonsense,” said he. Luncheon was announced. At table Jimmie and Norma were neighbours. Aline sat between Morland, who was next to Norma, and old Colonel Pawley. As the latter at first talked to Mrs. Deering, Aline and Morland carried on a frigid conversation. They had never been friends. To Morland, naturally, she was merely a little girl of no account, who had often been annoyingly in the way when he wanted to converse with Jimmie; and Aline, with a little girl's keen intuition, had divined more of his real character than she was aware of, and disliked and distrusted him. Like a well-brought-up young lady she answered “yes” and “no” politely to his remarks, but started no fresh topic. At last, to her relief, Colonel Pawley rescued her from embarrassed silence. To him she had extended her favour. He was a short fat man, with soft hands and a curious soft purring voice, and the air rather of a comfortable old lady than of a warrior who had retired on well-merited laurels. He occupied his plentiful leisure by painting on silk, which he made into fans for innumerable lady acquaintances. In his coat-tail pocket invariably reposed a dainty volume bound in crushed morocco--a copy of little poems of his own composition--and this, when he was in company with a sympathetic feminine soul, he would abstract with apoplectic wheezing and bashfully present. He also played little tunes on the harp. Aline, with the irreverence of youth, treated him as a kind of human toy. His first word roused the girl's spontaneous gaiety. She bubbled over with banter. The mild old warrior chuckled with her, threw himself unreservedly into the childish play. Connie whispered to Jimmie: “I should like to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck and turn him loose in a meadow. I am sure he would frisk.”