boy-fashion, into the pockets of her checked overalls, surveyed herself
deliberately, and then looking up at me rather reproachfully remarked,
"Tousin Maria says that now you and father are tumpany!"

"And what is company?" I asked, rather anxious to know from what new
point we were to be regarded.

"Tumpany is people that comes to stay in the pink room wif trunks, and
we play wif them and make them do somfing to amuse 'em all the time
hard, and give 'em nicer things than we have to eat, and father shaves
too much and tuts him and wears his little dinky coat to dinner. And by
and by when they've gone away Ann-stasia says, 'Glory be!' and muvver
goes to sleep. But muvver, if you are the tumpany, you can't go to sleep
when you've gone away, can you?"

A voice joined me in laughter, Maria Maxwell's, from inside the open
window of the dining room. Looking toward the sound, I saw that, though
the dining table itself had been cleared, a side table drawn close to
the window was set with places for two, a posy of poets' narcissus and
the last lilies-of-the-valley between, while a folded napkin at one
place rested on a newspaper!

"I thought we were to get our own breakfasts," I said, in a tone of very
feeble expostulation, which plainly told that, at that particular
moment, it was the last thing I wished to do.

"You are, the very minute you feel like it, and not before! You must let
yourselves down gradually, and not bolt out of the house as if you had
been evicted. If Bart went paperless and letterless this very first
morning, until he has met something that interests him more, he would