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graciousness of her reception, and forgot her nerves.
    The old man was tall, almost as tall as his grandson and as straight-backed as a man thirty years his junior. He bowed over her hand as he held it in his own for a courteously brief moment and Katie noticed the thickness of his white hair and the bright alertness of his blue eyes. He was still a remarkably handsome man.
    “How do you do, Miss Roberts,” the deep voice had softness as well as resonance. “I’m delighted to meet you. I understand you are a new resident in Mare Green?”
    “Yes, I am,” Katie admitted, somewhat overwhelmed. “I only arrived yesterday, and it was very good of you to invite me here, it’s rather strange at first in a new place.”
    “Of course it is. You are to stay permanently, I hope?” There was a trace of Jamie’s admiring impudence in the question, and Katie smiled.
    “I think so, Sir Janus,” she said, “if my aunt will put up with me.”
    “If your aunt won’t we will,” Jamie interrupted, and even his grandfather’s frown failed to quell his high spirits. “Come and meet the rest of the family.” He guided her across the terrace to where the other man and a middle-aged woman watched them, strangely similar smiles on their faces, the man standing, the woman sitting in one of the numerous white garden chairs. It was the same warm, friendly smile that all the members of the family seemed to have, except John Miller, and she wondered fleetingly what made him so different from the rest of them.
    They stopped before the man first. “Jacko,” Jamie said, “this is Miss Roberts; my uncle, John Dennison.” The man was a younger, slightly less impressive version of the old man, except that his hair had not yet achieved the pure whiteness of the older man’s, but only the indistinction of what Katie dubbed ‘pepper and salt’.
    “Miss Roberts,” his hand as he greeted her was unpleasantly moist and he extended his limp hold for longer than was necessary.
    “Dodo!” Jamie almost shouted at the woman, who bore a striking resemblance to John Dennison. “I want you to meet Miss Roberts.” He pulled a rueful face at Katie. “My aunt, Miss Dorothy Dennison.” His hand encompassed them both in a gesture. “We call them the heavenly twins,” he said, and as neither of them seemed to resent the nickname, Katie smiled as she shook hands with Dorothy Dennison.
    “Really twins?” she asked.
    “Really twins, Miss Roberts,” his aunt hastened to answer before Jamie could. She had a remarkably sweet voice that compensated in part for her somewhat masculine features. She smiled up at Katie. “You have excellent diction, my dear,” she said. “I have no difficulty in understanding you at all.”
    “Dodo isn’t really very hard of hearing,” Fran spoke from beside a table near them, a coffee pot in her hand poised ready to pour. “It’s just that Jamie exaggerates so.”
    “Please sit down, Miss Roberts,” Sir Janus moved a chair nearer to the table. “It will be good for Fran to have someone of her own age to talk to other than Jamie, she spends altogether too much time with us old folk.”
    Fran frowned shyly at having the conversation turned on her and looked at Katie, her freckled face smiling broadly. “I hope you stay in Mare Green, Miss Roberts, it would be fun if you did. There are so few young people here to make friends with.”
    Katie accepted a cup of excellent coffee, white as she had requested, and smiled at the other girl’s friendliness. “It’s always good to make friends,” she agreed. “And please call me Katie as the first step in the right direction, won’t you ?” .
    “May I call you Katie, too?” Jamie Miller’s deep voice spoke softly in her ear as he leaned over the table to sugar his coffee. “I’d like us to be friends,” he flicked his impudent blue gaze over her face, “to start with, anyway.”
     
    Aunt Cora seemed delighted that Katie should spend so much time at the