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Her mother kissed the lids down over those great dark eyes. Sometimes her heart ached with fear of this strange child’s future. Then again Anne was so reassuringly human that the pang of anxiety over her unearthliness was swallowed up in anxiety of the opposite sort.

So now Mrs. Berkley kissed down the lids over the meditative eyes and murmured comfortingly:

“Little Anne must remember that God knows best.”

Anne sprang to her feet with a whoop that made her mother gasp.

“Oh, yes, ’course!” she cried, swiftly disposing of theology for the moment. “I hear Peter-two coming in. He promised to bring me elder whistles for Cricket that’ll just about make him come, no matter where he is, and if Peter-two hasn’t done it—— Well, he’ll catch it!”

With which Anne rushed from the room. An instant later her mother’s fear as to her son’s safety—if she felt any—was set at rest by a whistle so shrill that it sent Cricket cowering under the sofa.

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CHRISTOPHER CARRINGTON threw the last third of his cigar into the fireplace and watched it as it tumbled over the back log. The back log made him think of his Aunt Anne, always there, always ready to be fired by smaller sticks. He had been restlessly touring the room for fifteen minutes, examining its ornaments, familiar to him from childhood, hardly conscious that he was handling bits of frail loveliness that his aunt never allowed other hands than her own to dust.