started Simon Cameron, moving backward, and halting
coquettishly at every few inches.

Gavin reached up and lifted the fluffy creature from the
trunk, cradling him in expert manner in the crook of one arm.
Simon Cameron forgot his fear and purred loudly, rubbing his
snub-nose face against his captor's sleeve.

"Don't feel too much flattered," adjured the girl. "He's like
that, with all strangers. As soon as he has known most people
a day or two, he'll have nothing to do with them."

"I know," assented Gavin. "That's a trick of Persian cats.
They have an inordinate interest in every one except the
people they know. Their idea of heaven is to be admired by a
million strangers at a time. If
I'd had any tobacco-reek on me, Simon Cameron wouldn't have
let me hold him as long as this. Persian's hate tobacco."

He set the soothed animal down on the lawn, where, after one
scornful look at the tugging and helpless dog, Simon Cameron
proceeded to rub his arched back against the man's legs, thus
transferring a goodly number of fluffy gray hairs to Brice's
shabby trousers. Tiring of this, he minced off, affectedly,
toward the distant house that stood at the landward end of the
sloping lawn.

As he set the cat down, Brice had stepped out of the shadows
of the grove, into the open. And now, not only his face, but
his whole body was clearly visible in the dying daylight. The