“To ‘Puss in Boots’?”
“Yes, if a certain young gentleman is good.”
Jack gave a shout of triumph, kissed Gwen, and skipped round the room as Murchison went out with his daughter in his arms.
The boy ran to Catherine, and jumped up to her embrace.
“I’m sorry, mother,” and his bright face vanquished her.
“Sorry, Jack?”
“I tore my knickers.”
And Catherine took the confession in the spirit that it was given.
CHAPTER XXII
Though the most agile of mock cats cut capers behind the foot-lights, and though forty fairies in green and crimson fluttered their gauzy wings under the paste-board trees, Gwen Murchison sat silent and solemn-eyed beside her father, while her brother shouted over the vagaries of Selina the Cook. The glitter, the kaleidoscopic color, the gaudy incidentalism of the mummery could charm only a transient light into Gwen’s eyes. She sat beside Murchison, with one hot hand in his, her face shining like a white flower out of the depths of the crowded balcony.