“All grown-up people, I suppose? No, thank you, dear aunt. You go alone, I would rather stay at home. May I have little Clemmy to play with? She will bring Juba, and Blanche is very partial to Juba, though she does scratch him.”
“Very well, my dear, you shall have your playmate, and I will go by myself.”
Kenelm stood aghast. “You will not go, Miss Mordaunt; Mrs. Braefield will be so disappointed. And if you don’t go, whom shall I have to talk to? I don’t like grown-up people better than you do.”
“You are going?”
“Certainly.”
“And if I go you will talk to me? I am afraid of Mr. Braefield. He is so wise.”
“I will save you from him, and will not utter a grain of wisdom.”
“Aunty, I will go.”
Here Lily made a bound and caught up Blanche, who, taking her kisses resignedly, stared with evident curiosity upon Kenelm.
Here a bell within the house rang the announcement of luncheon. Mrs. Cameron invited Kenelm to partake of that meal. He felt as Romulus might have felt when first invited to taste the ambrosia of the gods. Yet certainly that luncheon was not such as might have pleased Kenelm Chillingly in the early days of the Temperance Hotel. But somehow or other of late he had lost appetite; and on this occasion a very modest share of a very slender dish of chicken fricasseed, and a few cherries daintily arranged on vine leaves, which Lily selected for him, contented him,—as probably a very little ambrosia contented Romulus while feasting his eyes on Hebe.