"Oh, Lud!" drawled Cecile, languidly fanning her flushed face, "I would
I had drunk small-beer--Harry, if you kick me again I'll pinch!"

"It's a shame," observed Ruyven, "that gentlemen of our age may not take
a glass of wine together in comfort."

"Your age!" laughed Dorothy. "Cousin Ormond is twenty-three, silly, and
I'm eighteen--or close to it."

"And I'm seventeen," retorted Ruyven.

"Yet I throw you at wrestling," observed Dorothy, with a shrug.

"Oh, your big feet! Who can move them?" he rejoined.

"Big feet? Mine?" She bent, tore a satin shoe from her foot, and slapped
it down on the table in challenge to all to equal it--a small,
silver-buckled thing of Paddington's make, with a smart red heel and a
slender body, slim as the crystal slipper of romance.

There was no denying its shapeliness; presently she removed it, and,
stooping, slowly drew it on her foot.

"Is that the shoe Sir John drank your health from?" sneered Ruyven.

A rich flush mounted to Dorothy's hair, and she caught at her wine-glass
as though to throw it at her brother.

"A married man, too," he laughed--"Sir John Johnson, the fat baronet of