Rudyard Kipling IS laughing at my trying to draw; and it will do you good.” “PI never laugh at anything you do,” he answered. “Pl be an artist, and I'll do things.” “Artists always want money, don’t they?” “ve got a hundred and twenty pounds a year of my own. My guardians tell me I’m to have it when I come of age. That will be enough to begin with.” “Ah, I’m rich,” said Maisie. “I’ve got three hundred a year all my own when I’m twenty-one. That’s why Mrs. Jennett is kinder to me than she is to you. I wish, though, that I had somebody that belonged to me, — just a father or a mother.” “You belong to me,” said Dick, “forever and ever.” “Yes, we belong — forever. It’s very nice.” She squeezed his arm. The kindly darkness hid them both, and, emboldened because he could only just see the profile of Maisie’s cheek with the long lashes veiling the gray eyes, Dick at the front door delivered himself of the words he had been boggling over for the last two hours. “And I — love you, Maisie,” he said, in a whisper that seemed to him to ring across the world, — the world that he would tomorrow or the next day set out to conquer. There was a scene, not, for the sake of discipline, to be reported, when Mrs. Jennett would have fallen upon him, first for disgraceful unpunctuality, and secondly for nearly killing himself with a forbidden weapon. “I was playing with it, and it went off by itself,” said Dick, when the powder-pocked cheek could no longer be hidden, “but if you think you're going to lick me you're wrong. You are never going to touch me again. Sit down and give me my tea. You can’t cheat us out of that, anyhow.” Mrs. Jennett gasped and became livid. Maisie said