there are some things here among the people I know better than you do, which you must take my word for. Now, pray understand, I say all this for all our good. Let Margaret Chetwynde alone."
CHAPTER XI.
Loring's studio was situated so far within sight of his aunt's dwelling that by going up to the observatory at the latter one could see the roofing and the upper windows of the building where Loring had set up his special Lares and Penates. Quite early in the year Donald had, with Loring's and Loretta's assistance, established a set of signals between the houses, which were merely decorative and amusing to the boy, since at any time a message could have been sent back and forth to announce Loring's return to town, or the fact that Donald and Loretta were going out in the carriage, or that Miss Loring had come home, or other similar pieces of intelligence which Donald vainly believed caused his brother to toil up-stairs several times a day in order to discover them from the variety of indications made in the observatory window. That these pieces of information reached him in any quicker or more direct fashion the child never suspected; and indeed it did sometimes chance that Loretta's first knowledge of Loring's return to town was when the little flag on its very shaky stick which was all, he declared to her, the owners of the building would permit, made its appearance on the roofing, to be tied up with black ribbon when he was away, and decorated with a bold streamer of red, white, and blue when Angus, so to speak, was in residence.
Loretta and her little companion felt certain that the promising signals would appear that day. Loring had gone on to New York to a club dinner, and had arranged before starting that Donald and Loretta, and his sister, if she chose, should come over to his studio for what the child called a "long afternoon," and what to one of the party, at least, always seemed the very shortest that any week could contain.
About three o'clock in the afternoon Loretta returned from a trip to the observatory to inform Donald that the flag was out and the streamers flying. Miss Loring, who had been reading aloud to her brother, looked from the child to Loretta with an expression of almost contemptuous amusement.
"I really cannot understand this thing between you," she said, laughing. "Donald, why are you so silly? It would be so easy to send James over to ask if Mr. Angus had come back; and I should think," she added, ruthlessly, "that Angus would feel too foolish for anything, going up and sticking out that ridiculous little thing on the top of a great big building."
Loretta looked at her from behind Donald's sofa imploringly. "I never feel foolish about it in the least," she said, reprovingly. "Donald and I like it, and we think it great fun. We've all sorts of little signals for Angus." (She didn't add that they, being almost invisible from the studio-building, had to be explained to him by special mes-
