Tommy Traddles, the striped cat, sat before a plump little girl on the floor, whose sunny face no amount of bad weather could cloud, watching the hearth-brush in her hand, which she occasionally whisked to and fro for his amusement, and making uncatlike cooings in his throat if she forgot him for too long. Jack Hildreth, the boy on the rug, said he was a cat with a canary-bird attachment.
On the edge of a chair opposite the cheery little girl on the floor sat a long-limbed, dark-eyed girl, holding her gypsy face in her hands, her elbows on her knees, listlessly watching Amy Tracy and the cat. They were spending the afternoon with Margaret Gresham, Jack's cousin, who was kept in the house by a cold, and whose tiny figure was curled up in a big leather chair near the fire, and her pale face and big, eager gray eyes looked out from its brown depths in sharp contrast.
"I'm going to ask St. Anthony to find the sun," announced the gypsy-like girl suddenly. She spoke through her closed teeth, not taking the trouble to remove her hands from her face.
"Not a bad idea, Trix," said Jack, laughing.
But their hostess looked shocked. "Why, Beatrice Lane, you shouldn't say that, it isn't right," she protested.
"Well, I'm sure it seems lost enough," retorted Trix.
"Nothing's lost when you know where it is," said Jack.
"I don't know where the sun is, except that it's somewhere in the sky," said Trix.
"It's just about there," said Jack, sitting up to point out of the window, and becoming more cheerful in the chance to show off to the girls. "It's sliding right down to the zenith."
"Horizon, Jack," interrupted Margery, laughing.