"Me? No. That's a good one. She's adopted Duncan's little boy, Bobbie. And when I suggested that I'd like to change places with Bobbie, she almost annihilated me."
All seemed to be enjoying the nonsense.
"Really, Miss Bright," continued Lord Kelwin, "I think you should be at the head of an orphanage."
"I suppose you'd like to be chief orphan," suggested John Clayton.
Then the talk drifted to serious themes, until dinner was announced. A birthday cake with sixteen lighted candles, in the center of the table, was the signal for another fusillade of fun.
"Sixteen! sixteen!" said Kenneth Hastings. "I accused Miss Bright, to-day, of being fifty, and she assured me she was not so young as that."
"Sixteen! sweet sixteen!" said Lord Kelwin, bowing low.
She, in turn, bowed her head.
"You see," she said, "our good prophet, Mrs. Clayton, cried out, and the shadow has turned backward on the dial of Ahaz."
"It is not so much the number of years we count on the dial, after all," spoke Mrs. Clayton, who had thus far listened smilingly to the others; "it is what we live into those years. And you have lived already a long life in your few years, dear friend."