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 soul. Where did you find that nurse, Louise? She's devotion personified."

"He took to his grandfather at once. Sat on his knee and watched him as though he had never seen anything so curious!"

"Baby is very rude," Louise apologized.

"Brutally candid," Alice agreed. "If an elephant offends him he throws it at his nurse, and if a new grandfather is substituted, he solemnly stares him out of countenance."

"We shall spoil him, my dear," said the monkey's little grandmother. "We're so proud of him."

Louise replaced her cup on the table, got up from her chair, and implanted a playful but wholehearted kiss on the old lady's forehead. "I'm dying to see the grandfather who was too big to be flung in Katie's eyes," she announced. "Shall we walk down to the lakeside and meet the boats? There's an easy path."

She led the way, with Lady Eveley. Two or three times as they descended the winding path the older woman patted Louise's arm and smiled, apropos of nothing, reassuringly. In the end Louise laughed and said, trying to keep her frankness within gentle bounds, "You know, I'm quite floored by your friendliness. I've been racking my brains to think how I could put you at your ease, and now I find that everybody's aim is to put me at mine. I wish you were going to stay longer. Four days is nothing."