permission. She sat quietly in the warm and pleasant arbor, holding
her doll-baby, with the afternoon sun sifting through the young
leaves, and making over them a shifting dapple like golden water, and
felt no inclination to stir. The spring languor was over even her
young limbs; the sweet twitter of birds, the gathering bird-like
flutter of leaves before a soft swell of air, the rustle of her
aunt's gilt-edged paper, an occasional hiss of her silken flounces,
grew dim and confused. Lucina, as well as her doll, fell asleep,
leaning her pretty head against the arbor trellis-work. Camilla did
not disturb her; she had never in her life disturbed the peace or the
slumber of any soul. She only gazed at her now and then, with gentle,
half-abstracted affection, then wrote again.

Presently, stepping with that subtlest silence of motion through the
quiet garden, came a great yellow cat. She rubbed against Miss
Camilla's knees with that luxurious purr of love and comfort which is
itself a completest slumber song, then made a noiseless leap to a
sunny corner of the bench, and settled herself there in a yellow coil
of sleep. Presently there came another, and another, and another
still--all great cats, and all yellow, marked in splendid tiger
stripes, with eyes like topaz--until there were four of them, all
asleep on the sunny side of the arbor. Miss Camilla's yellow cats
were of a famous breed, well represented in the village; but she had
these four, which were marvels of beauty.

Another hour wore on. Miss Camilla still wrote, and Lucina and the
yellow cats slept. Then it was four o'clock, and time for the
entertainment to which Lucina had looked forward.

There was a heavy footstep on the garden walk and a rustling among