constituted all the furniture, save the table. The floor was covered with a cold linoleum. There was no flower in the room. Only one gas-burner was alight, and it left gloomy corners. There was a stiff look about it all, a poverty and bareness that was bewilderingly new to them. A beautiful little cocker spaniel, who pressed close to them with plaintive whimpers when they entered the room, looked quite out of place there. Miss Kezia eyed her with disfavour. She demanded, "Where will that dog sleep?"

The want of due respect in the designation roused Sheila Pat.

She said coldly, "Her name is Kate Kearney."

"What a ridiculous name!" Miss Kezia ejaculated.

The Atom was indignant.

"Is it rickelous? And how about Kezia, then?"

There was a pause.

Denis interposed amusedly: "Perhaps you don't know the song, Aunt Kezia? It's like this—" Gaily his voice sang out:—

"'Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?

She lives on the banks of Killarney—'

"Eh? Noise? Noise?" he murmured surprisedly. "Allow me just to whisper the lines that fit K.K. so beautifully:—

"'For that eye is so modestly beaming

You ne'er think of mischief she's dreaming—'"

Grim and portentous came an interruption.

"Is it mischievous?"

"Er—" said Denis, and his eye twinkled, "she was when she was a puppy, you see."

"Um," observed Miss Kezia. "If it works any mischief here, it will have to be chained up in the garden."

"Sure, then," burst wildly from the Atom, "'tis myself'll be chained beside her!"

"Sheila, do not be absurd!"

"And she isn't 'it'! If you call her 'it' again, I'll be callin' you a Scotch bannock!"

Nell roused to a perfunctory—

"Oh, Sheila Pat!"

Miss Kezia said coldly, "You are a very rude little girl." She turned to Denis. "Will you tell me where that dog is to sleep?"

"On the mat outside Nell's door."

"I will not have a dog rampaging over my house to work what mischief it likes while we sleep."

"She shall sleep on my bed," put in a very disdainful Atom.

"Certainly she shall not! Disgusting! Unhealthy! Spoiling my counterpanes!"

Nell looked at Miss Kezia, a weary wonder in her face. "She can sleep on the floor beside my bed," she said.

Miss Kezia hesitated; her eyes met those of the Atom—wide, defiant, indomitable in her small, obstinate face. In her ears echoed some words of Mrs. O'Brien's that Miss Kezia had privately labelled foolish. "Sheila Pat is delicate. Perhaps we have spoilt her a little. She is very strong-willed. She cannot be driven, but she can be led. Her feelings use her up—exhaust her." There had been a little sudden hopeless pause there; then—"I hope you will understand her."

Miss Kezia had not noticed the pause or the pleading note—a note vibrating with the struggle against the speaker's own conviction. She would not have understood, had she noticed, any more than she would ever understand the Atom of humanity who was defying her now.

"Very well," she said, with a glance of dislike at poor K.K.

Denis broke in with a solicitous air, and a tone reminiscent of the Blarney Stone:—

"I do wish you would go to bed, Aunt Kezia! You do look so tired."

Nell smiled suddenly.

"Yes, do, Aunt Kezia," she urged demurely.

Miss Kezia, after somewhat lengthy directions as to turning off the gas, shutting, locking, and hanging a huge burglar bell on the dining-room door, turned to leave the room.

Sheila Pat, stiff, erect, followed her with warlike gaze.

Miss Kezia paused and said:—

"See that that baby goes to bed the minute she has finished her porridge. She ought not to have gone to the docks at all—"

Nell flashed out a shaky interruption—

"Others—thought she ought!"

The Atom observed calmly:—

"I am not a baby. At home, gerrels of six will not be babies. I'm not wantin' the stirabout at all, thank you."

"Sheila, you are speaking with an atrocious accent!"

For the first time that night the Atom's sombre eyes lit with a gleam of satisfaction.

"Accent, is it? Sure and 'tisn't me own native accent I'd be ashamed of then!" she retorted.

"It isn't the accent of ladies and gentlemen, Sheila! You are a rude and foolish little girl!"

Calm and unabashed, the Atom responded with fervour.

"'Tis the way many of my best friends spake at home—always—wakin' and sleepin' they spake like that, and I'll be spakin' like it, too."

With her black little head well up, and her absurd pig-tail at an acute angle, she waited for Miss Kezia's response.

But Denis interposed from the doorway with a judicious appeal to her sense of economy.

"I say, Aunt Kezia, I've lit your candle, and it's spluttering like a dumb man asking for a tip!"

Miss Kezia turned and hurriedly left the room.

Molly suddenly pushed her bowl away with an angry clatter. She flung her arms out over the table and hid her face in them.

"Oh, I can't—help it!" she cried out wildly. "Everything's so—awful!" and she burst into tears.

Nell caught her underlip between her teeth and rose.

"Shan't we go to bed, Denis?" she said wearily.

"Yes, come along. K.K. may as well have the porridge. We've been neglecting you, old lady, haven't we, then?"

The Atom sat rigid, her shocked gaze bent stiffly on Molly's prone head.

"Oh," sobbed Molly, "I shall die—in a week—here—I—hate Aunt Kezia—I hate this house—I hate—everything! Oh, I want mother—and dad—"

The Atom got down stiffly from her chair, her gaze never leaving Molly.

Nell, in pity of the little white face, tried to put Kate Kearney into her arms, but she drew back. "I don't want her," she said.

They crept upstairs and bade each other good night.

"I—I'm sure I'll be dead when I wake up in the morning!" Molly quavered wretchedly. "I—can't breathe—in this place—there isn't room to move—I shall suffocate."

Sheila Pat was to share Nell's room. She