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THOSE BREWSTER CHILDREN

[Illustration: The occasion was not wholly barren of material for a
trained psychologist (page 56)]

THOSE BREWSTER CHILDREN

by

FLORENCE MORSE KINGSLEY

Author of "The Singular Miss
Smith," "And So They Were
Married," etc.

With Illustrations by Emily Hall Chamberlain

New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1910

Copyright, 1908
By Phelps Publishing Company

Copyright, 1910
By Dodd, Mead and Company

Published, March, 1910

ILLUSTRATIONS

The occasion was not wholly barren of material
 for a trained psychologist (page 56)           _Frontispiece_

"Cwyin'?" he observed in a bird-like voice   _Facing page_ 146

"She'll remember it, you'll find, better
 than one of Mrs. Stanford's whippings"         "      "   182

Elizabeth Brewster sat by the window of her sewing-room in the fading
light of the winter afternoon. She had been straining her eyes a little
over her work and the intent look did not leave them as she glanced out
into the gathering dusk. She could see all three of the children at
their play on the lawn. Carroll, tall and sturdy for his eight years;
Doris slim and active, her reddish blond hair streaming out from under
her hood and blowing about her eager little face, and three-year-old
Baby Richard, toiling manfully to keep up with the others as they piled
damp snow-balls into the rude semblance of a human figure.

"Darlings!" murmured the mother to herself, a happy light seemingly
reflected from the red winter sunset shining on her face. She raised the
sash a hand's breadth and called to them, "Come in now, children; it is
growing too cold for Richard to stay out any longer."

She glanced regretfully at her unfinished sewing as she rose, gathering
up thread, scissors and thimble with the absent-minded carefulness born
of long habit. Something was scorching on the kitchen range, she feared,
a well-founded distrust of the heavy-handed Norwegian maid hastening her
steps down the precipitous back stairway.

The range was heated to redness, and several saucepans huddled together
over the hottest place were bubbling furiously. Celia, the maid, was
setting the table in the dining-room, with slow, meditative motions like
those of an ox. She did not appear at all disturbed at sight of her
mistress hurriedly dashing water into one of the utensils, from which
arose an evil-smelling steam.

"Oh, Celia! how many times must I tell you to cook the vegetables in
plenty of water?" demanded Mrs. Brewster, in despairing tones. "And
look! your fire is almost up to the griddles. Have you shaken it down
this afternoon?"

The girl shook her big head with its untidy braids of straw-coloured
hair. "Naw!" she observed explosively, after a pause filled with the
noise of descending ashes.

"You should say 'no, Mrs. Brewster,' or 'no, ma'am,'" her mistress
said, with an obvious effort after self-control. "Try not to forget
again, Celia. Now you may go up to your room and make yourself tidy
before you finish dinner."

The girl obeyed with the heavy, lurching steps of one crossing a
ploughed field. Elizabeth, hurriedly opening doors and windows to the
frosty sunset caught sight of her three children still busy about their
snow image.

"Carroll, dear!" she called, "didn't you hear mother when she told you
to come in?"

The boy turned his handsome head. "Yes, mother; I did hear you," he
said, earnestly, "an' I told Doris to go straight into the house an'
bring Richard; but she wouldn't go. I had to finish this first, you see,
'cause I've planned----"

"Come in now," interrupted his mother, forestalling the detailed
explanation sure to follow. "Come in at once!"

The boy dropped the snow-shovel with which he was carefully shaping the
base of his image. "Don't you hear mother, Doris?" he demanded in a
clear, authoritative voice. "You must go right in this minute an' take
Buddy."

The little girl thrust out the tip of a saucy pink tongue at her
brother.

"Mother said you too, Carroll Brewster; you don't have to tell me an'
Buddy. Does he, mother?"

"Carroll! Doris!"

There was no mistaking the tone of the mother's voice. The baby,
suddenly conscious of cold fingers and tingling toes, ran toward her
with a whining cry, his short arms outstretched. The others followed
slowly, exchanging mutinous glances.

"Carroll is always trying to make me an' Buddy mind him; but we won't,"
observed Doris, emphatically kicking her overshoes across the floor.

"All three of you should obey mother every time," chanted Elizabeth in
the weary tone of an oft-repeated admonition. She sighed as she added,
"It is very naughty to argue and dispute."

"But you see, mother, I'm the oldest," began Carroll argumentatively,
"an' I generally know what the children ought to do just as well as
anybody."

He hung up his hat and coat and set his overshoes primly side by side
with a rebuking glance at his small sister, who tossed her mane of hair
at him disdainfully.

"I see you've forgotten what mother said about overshoes, Doris," he
whispered with an air of superior merit which appeared to exasperate the
little girl beyond endurance. She leaned forward suddenly and a piercing
squeal from the boy announced the fact that virtue frequently reaps an
unexpected reward.

"Doris pinched my ear hard, mother," he explained, winking fast to keep
back the unmanly tears. "I didn't even touch her."

Elizabeth looked up from kissing and cuddling her baby. "Oh, Doris dear;
how could you! Don't you love your little brother?"

The little girl flattened herself against the newel-post, her brown eyes
full of warm, dancing lights. "Sometimes I do, mother," she said, with
an air of engaging candour; "an' sometimes I feel jus'--like biting
him!"

Elizabeth surveyed her daughter with large eyes of pained astonishment.

"You make mother very sorry when you say such naughty things, Doris,"
she said, severely. "Hang up your coat and hood; then you must go
up-stairs to your room and stay till I call you."

In the half hour that followed Elizabeth gave her youngest his supper of
bread and milk and hurried him off to bed, endeavouring in the meanwhile
to keep a watchful eye upon the operations of the heavy-handed Celia,
now irreproachable in a freshly starched cap and apron, and an attentive
ear for Carroll practicing scales and exercises in the parlour. Later
there was a salad to make, which involved the skilful compounding of a
French dressing, and last of all a hurried freshening of her own toilet
before the quick opening of the front door announced the advent of the
head of the house.

Elizabeth was fastening her collar with fingers which trembled a little
with the strain of her multiplied activities, when she heard her
husband's voice upraised in joyous greetings to the children. "Hello
there, Carroll, old man! And daddy's little girl, too!"

She had entirely forgotten Doris, and that young person had quite
evidently escaped from durance vile into the safe shelter of her
father's arms. After all, it was a small matter, Elizabeth assured
herself; and Sam disliked tears and unpleasantness during the hours, few
and short, he could spend with the children. Promising herself that she
would talk seriously with the small offender at bed-time she ran down
stairs to receive her own greeting, none the less prized and longed for
after ten years of married life.

Her husband's eyes met her own with a smile. "Betty--dear!" he
whispered, passing his arm about her shoulders. Doris from the other
side peered around at her mother, her bright eyes full of laughing
triumph.

"If I'm not very much mistaken," her father said mysteriously, "there's
something in my coat pocket for good children."

Doris instantly joined her brother in a race for the highly desirable
pocket, and the two were presently engaged in an amicable division of
the spoils.

"You mustn't eat any candy till after dinner, children," warned
Elizabeth.

Doris had already set her sharp white teeth in a bonbon, when her
father's hand interposed. "Hold hard, there, youngsters," he said; "you
heard the order of the court; no candy till after dinner."

"Just this one, daddy," pouted Doris. "I think I might." She swallowed
it quickly and reached for another.

"Not till after dinner, young lady," and the pasteboard box was lifted
high out of reach of small exploring fingers.

"Oh, Sam, why will you persist in bringing home candy?" Elizabeth asked,
with a sort of tired indulgence in her voice. "You know they oughtn't to
have it."

"I forgot, Betty. Please, ma'am, will you 'xcuse me, just this once--if
I'll never do it again?"

His upraised hands and appealing eyes were irresistibly funny. Elizabeth
laughed helplessly, and the children rolled on the floor in an ecstasy
of mirth.

When presently all trooped out to dinner neither parent observed Doris
as she nibbled a second bonbon.

"Oh-o-o! You naughty girl!" whispered Carroll enviously. "Where did you
get that?"

"Out of the box," replied the small maiden, with a toss of her yellow
head. "Um-m, it's good; don't you wish you had some?"

"Mother said----"

"Don't talk so loud; I'll give you half!"

"It's most all gone now. I'll tell mother, if you don't give me all the
rest." And the boy reached masterfully for the coveted morsel.

"You're such a rude child you oughtn't to have any," observed Doris,
nonchalantly bestowing the debatable dainty in her own mouth. "If you
tell, I'll call you 'tattle-tale'!" she said thickly; "then the' won't
either of us get any."

Carroll scowled fiercely at this undeniable statement. His father did
not encourage unmanly reprisals.

"You're an awful selfish child, Doris," he said reproachfully, "an'
that's worse 'an being rude; mother said so. It's worser 'an anything to
be selfish. _I_ wouldn't do it; guess I wouldn't!"

"I am not selfish!"

"You are, too!"

"_Chil--dren!_"

Their mother's vaguely admonitory voice caused the belligerents to slip
meekly enough into their respective seats. They were hungry, and the
soup smelled good. But their eyes and explorative toes continued the
skirmish in a spirited manner.

"I had a letter from Evelyn Tripp to-day," Elizabeth was saying, as she
fastened the children's long linen bibs. "----Sit up straight in your
chair, Doris, and stop wriggling."

Sam Brewster cast an admonitory eye upon his son. "Evelyn Tripp!" he
echoed, "I haven't heard you mention the lady in a long time."

"You know they left Boston last year and I hardly ever see her
now-a-days. Poor Evelyn!"

"It is too bad," he said with mock solicitude. "Now, if you hardly ever
saw me it would be 'poor Sam,' I suppose."

"The Tripps lost most of their money," she went on, ignoring his
frivolous comment; "then they moved to Dorchester."

He helped himself to more soup with a reminiscent smile. "Worse luck for
Dorchester," he murmured.

"Why, Sam," she said reprovingly. "Of course Evelyn was--Evelyn; but
she was as kind as could be just after we were married, and before, too.
Don't you remember?"

"Oh, yes; I remember perfectly. We were pawns on the chess-board in Miss
Tripp's skilful hands for awhile," he agreed drily. "She's a Napoleon,
a--er--Captain of Industry, a----"

"Please don't, Sam," interrupted Elizabeth. "Poor Evelyn has been very
unfortunate, and I'm sorry for her. She--wants to come and make us a
visit, and I----"

An appalling thump and a smothered squeal marked the spot where, at this
crucial point in the conversation, Doris suddenly disappeared from view.
Her father stooped to peer under the cloth.

"Will you kindly tell me what you were trying to do, Doris?" he
demanded, as he fished his daughter out from under the table in a more
or less dishevelled condition.

"It was Carroll's fault, daddy," replied the child. "He kicked me under
the table, an' course I was 'bliged to kick him back; an' I did it!"

Her air of sparkling triumph provoked a smile from her father; but
Elizabeth looked grave.

"I really think," she said, "that Doris ought to go upstairs without
dessert. You know, Doris, you disobeyed mother when you came down
without leave."

The little girl's eyes flashed angry fire. "Carroll kicked me first,"
she pouted, "an' I couldn't reach him; he wasn't fair 'cause he got 'way
back in his chair on purpose; you know you did, Carroll Brewster!"

Elizabeth turned judicially to her son.

"No, mother," explained the boy, "I didn't really kick Doris; I just put
out my toe and poked her,--just a small, soft poke; you know it didn't
hurt, Doris; but I did squeeze back in my chair so you couldn't reach
me." His candid blue eyes, so like his father's, looked full into hers.

"Well, in view of the evidence, I propose that you suspend sentence,
Betty, and let them both off," put in the head of the house. "You'll be
a good girl and keep your toes under your chair, won't you, Dorry?"

"Yes, daddy, I will," promised the little girl, gazing up at her father
from under her curved lashes with the dimpled sweetness of a youthful
seraph. "I do love you so, daddy," she cooed gently. "I feel just like
kissing you!"

Her father caught the child in his arms and pressed half a dozen kisses
on her rosy cheeks before depositing her in her chair. "Remember,
girlie, you must be as quiet as a mouse or your mother will whisk you
off to bed before you can say Jack Robinson." He cast a laughing glance
across the table at his wife. "You see we all stand in proper awe of
you, my dear!"

"Oh, Sam!" murmured Elizabeth reprovingly; but she laughed with the
children.

II

When the militant young Brewsters were at last safely bestowed in bed,
Elizabeth sank into her low chair with an involuntary sigh of relief--or
fatigue, she hardly knew which.

"Tired, dear?" asked her husband, glancing up from his paper. "I suppose
you've put in a pretty hard day breaking in the foreigner. But you're
doing wonders. The dinner wasn't half bad, and the mechanic didn't break
a single dish in the process; at least I didn't hear the usual crash
from the rear."

She smiled back at him remotely. She did not think it worth while to
report the scorched potatoes, or the broken platter belonging to her
best set of dishes.

"I was thinking about Doris," she said.

Her husband's eyes lighted with a reminiscent smile. "Little monkey!" he
exclaimed. "She slid down the banisters like a streak of lightning and
flew into my arms before I had time to take off my overcoat. She said
she was sitting on the stairs, waiting for me to come. Not many
children think enough about seeing their old daddy to sit on the stairs
in the dark!"

"I'm really sorry to undeceive you, Sam; but I had sent that child up to
her room, and told her to stay there till I called her!" Elizabeth
informed him crisply.

"Wherefore the incarceration, O lady mother?"

"She was very naughty, Sam; she pinched Carroll, and when I reproved her
for doing it, she said she felt like biting him. Think of that! Of
course I had to do something."

"What had Carroll done to provoke the cannibalistic desire on the part
of the young woman?" he wanted to know, with judicial calm.

"Nothing at all, except to remind Doris to hang up her coat and put her
overshoes away, as I've told them both to do repeatedly."

His mouth twitched with an amused smile. "And Dorry punished him
promptly for his display of superior virtue--eh? Well, it may be very
much out of order for a mere father to say so, but I'll venture to
express the opinion that it won't hurt Master Carroll to get an
occasional snubbing from somebody. He's a good deal of a prig, Betty,
and it's got to come out of him some way or other between now and his
Sophomore year in college. Better not interfere too often, my dear. Let
'em work it out; it won't hurt either of 'em."

His wife surveyed him with wide, sad eyes. "Oh, Sam!" she murmured, "how
can you talk like that? Carroll tries to be a good boy and help me all
he can. But Doris----"

"Don't you worry about the little girl," advised her husband, laying a
soothing hand on hers. "She's all right."

"She ought not to quarrel with the other children; or disobey me. You
know that, Sam."

"Of course not. You'll have to make her toe the mark, Betty."

"But how, Sam? I've tried. I'm positively worn out trying."

The man pursed up his lips in an inaudible whistle. "Upon my word,
Betty," he broke out at length, "I don't know as I can tell you. We
don't stand for whipping, you know. Beating small children always struck
me as being a relic of the dark ages; and I know I could never stand it
to see a child of mine cower before me out of physical fear. But we
mustn't spoil 'em!"

"Marian Stanford whips Robbie every time he disobeys," Elizabeth said
after a lengthening pause. "She uses a butter-paddle--the kind I make
those little round balls with; you know it has a corrugated surface. She
says it is just the thing; it hurts so nicely. But I'm sure Robbie
Stanford is far naughtier than Carroll ever thinks of being."

Her husband broke into a helpless laugh which he promptly repressed at
sight of her indignant face.

"You oughtn't to laugh, Sam," she told him, in a tone of dignified
reproof. "You may not think it very important--all this about the
children; but it is. It is the most important thing in the world. Even
Marian Stanford says----"

"Why do you discuss the subject with her?" interrupted Sam. "You'll
never agree; and whatever we do with our own children, we mustn't force
our views on other people."

She surveyed him with a mutinous expression about her pretty lips.
"Marian doesn't hesitate to criticise my methods," she said. "The last
time I saw her she informed me that she had whipped her baby--only
think, Sam, her _baby_!"

"Did she use the butter-paddle on the unfortunate infant?" he wanted to
know, with a quizzical lift of his eyebrows; "or was it a spanking _au
naturel_?"

Elizabeth repressed his levity with a frown. "I wonder at you, Sam, for
thinking there's anything funny about it," she said rebukingly. "I
didn't feel at all like laughing when she said--with such a superior
air--'Livingstone's been getting altogether too much for me lately, and
this morning I took the paddle to him and whipped him soundly. He was
the most surprised child you ever saw!' Of course I didn't _say_
anything. What could I have said? But I must have looked what I felt,
for she burst out laughing. 'Dear, dear!' she said, 'how indignant you
do look; but I intend to have _my_ children mind me.' Then she glanced
at Richard peacefully pulling the spools out of my basket as if she
pitied him for having such a fond, weak mother as to allow it."

Sam Brewster rumpled his hair with a smothered yawn. "Marian is
certainly a strenuous lady," he murmured. "But let me advise you, Betty,
not to discuss family discipline with her, if you wish to preserve
peaceful relations between the families. The illegitimate use of the
Stanford butter-paddle is nothing to us, you know.--Er--you were telling
me about the letter you had from the fair Evelyn," he went on
pacifically, "and did my ears deceive me? or did you intimate that our
dear friend Miss Tripp was coming to spend the day with us soon?"

"To spend the day!" echoed Elizabeth. "She's coming to stay two weeks. I
had to ask her, Sam," she added, quickly forestalling his dismayed
protest; "she is obliged to be in town interviewing lawyers and people,
and I did want to do something to help her. Sam, she thinks she may be
obliged to teach, or do something; but she isn't up on anything, and I
don't believe she could possibly get any sort of a position."

"Betty, you're a good little woman," he said, beaming humorously upon
her; "and I never felt more convinced of the fact than I do this
minute. I'm game, though; I'll do everything I can to help in my small,
weak way."

Elizabeth gazed at her husband with wide, meditative eyes. "I do wish,"
she said devoutly, "that Evelyn could meet some nice, suitable man.
She's really very attractive--you know she is, Sam--and it would solve
all her problems so beautifully."

"How would Hickey do?" he inquired lazily. "George is forty, if not fat
and fair; and he's a thoroughly good fellow."

Elizabeth Brewster had been awake in the night, as was her custom,
making her noiseless rounds of the children's beds by the dim light of a
candle. A cold wind had sprung up, with driving snow and sleet, and she
feared its incursion into her nursery. Daylight found her in the kitchen
superintending the slow movements of Celia, who upset the coffee-pot,
dropped a soft-boiled egg on the hearth and stumbled over her untied
shoe-strings in her untutored efforts to assist.

Close upon the hurried departure of her husband to his office in a
distant part of the city, came the sound of small feet and voices from
above. With Sam's kiss still warm on her lips she ran lightly upstairs.
Carroll, partly dressed, stood before the mirror brushing his hair, in
funny imitation of his father's careful manner of accomplishing that
necessary process; while Doris scampered wildly about in her night-gown,
her small bare feet pink with cold.

"I wanted to see my daddy," she pouted, as her mother remonstrated. "I
wanted to tell him somesing."

"You can tell him to-night, girlie.--Yes, baby; in just a minute!"
Elizabeth's fingers were flying as she pulled on the little girl's warm
stockings and buttoned her shoes. "Now then, kittykins, slip into your
warm dressing-gown and see how nicely you can brush your teeth, while
mother--What is it, Carroll? Oh, a button off? Well, I'll sew it on.
Give Buddy his picture-book.--Yes, pet; mother knows you're hungry; you
shall have breakfast in just a minute. See the pretty pictures.--That's
right, Carroll, my work-basket. Now stand still while I--Oh, Doris dear!
Did you drop the glass?"

"It was all slippy, mother, an' I couldn't hold it. It's on the floor,
mother, all in teeny, weeny pieces!"

"Don't step on them! Wait, I'll sweep up the pieces.--Yes, baby, mother
hears you! See the pretty picture of the little pigs! Those nice little
pigs aren't crying!--Wait, Carroll, till mother fastens the thread.
There, that's done! Now put the basket--What is it, Doris? Oh, poor
little girl; you've cut your finger. Don't cry! But you see you should
have minded mother and not touched the broken glass. Now we'll tie it up
in this nice soft cloth, and----

"Yes, Celia; what is it? Oh, the butcher? Well, let me think--We had
beefsteak last night. Tell him to bring chops--nice ones; not like the
last.--Oh, I must run down and speak to that boy; he's so careless with
the orders! Tell him to wait a minute, Celia.--Carroll, won't you show
baby his pictures and keep him quiet till I--No, Doris; you mustn't
touch that bottle; that is father's bay-rum. Put it down, quick!"

The meddlesome little fingers let go the bottle with a jerk. It fell to
the floor, its fragrant contents pouring over the carpet. "Oh, you
naughty child! What will mother do with you? All of daddy's nice--Yes,
Celia; I hear you. I am coming directly. I must wipe up this--He says he
can't wait? Well, tell him to bring two pounds of nice lamb chops--rib
chops. If they are like the last ones he brought tell him I shall send
them right back.

"Now, Doris, I want you to look at mother. Why did you climb up in that
chair and pull the cork out of the bottle, when I've told you never to
meddle with the things on the chiffonière?"

"I should think that child would know better after a while," put in
Carroll, with the solemn air of an octogenarian grandfather. "You ought
to have remembered the salad oil last week, Doris, and the ink the week
before!"

"Don't interrupt, Carroll; I'm talking to Doris just now. Look at
mother; don't hang your head."

"I wanted to--smell of it," muttered the child, digging her round chin
into her neck, while she eyed her mother from under puckered brows.
"Daddy said I might; lots of times he lets me smell it."

"Yes, when he holds the bottle; but now, you see, poor daddy won't have
any nice bay-rum the next time he wants to shave. He'll say 'who spilled
my bay-rum?'"

"It smells good!" observed Doris, filling the judicial pause with a
rapturous giggle.

"But it will all evaporate before night," said Elizabeth, taking up her
youngest, who had thrown The Adventures of Seven Little Pigs on the
floor and was protesting loudly at the delay.

"How do you spell evaporate, mother?" asked Carroll. "That's a funny
word--e-vap-o-rate. What does it mean, mother?"

"It means to go away into the air--to disappear," Elizabeth told him.
"See the big spot on the floor, and smell how fragrant the air is. Now
we'll go down to breakfast and I will open the windows; when I come back
after a while the bay-rum will be gone; it will be evaporated. Do you
understand? Doris can't pick it up and put it back into the bottle, no
matter how sorry she may feel to think she has been so careless."

Two widely opened pairs of serious eyes travelled from the lessening
spot on the floor to her face.

"I think it would be nice to spill a bottle of 'fumery every day an'
smell it 'vaporate," gurgled Doris, showing her dimples.

Elizabeth lifted the mischievous face toward hers with an admonitory
finger-tip. "I'll tell you, Doris, what you must do to make it right
with father," she said slowly and impressively. "You must take all the
money out of your bank and buy a new bottle of bay-rum."

She felt that for once, at least, she had made the punishment fit the
crime to a nicety.

"Not all my money, mother?"

"It will take every cent of it, I am afraid."

The small culprit clapped her hands and executed an impromptu pirouette.
"Oh, goody, goody, Carroll! mother says I may spend all my money; won't
that be fun? When, mother, when can I buy the bottle for daddy? To-day?
Say yes, mother; please say yes!"

Elizabeth buried her face in her baby's fat neck to conceal the
rebellious smile that would curve her young lips, just when she knew she
ought to be grave and severe.

"If you are a good girl in kindergarten I will take you to the store
this afternoon," she said finally, with an undercurrent of wonder at the
punishment which had so suddenly been metamorphosed into a reward. These
singular transformations were apt to occur when her small daughter was
concerned. She reflected upon the recurrence of the phenomenon as she
brushed the silken mass of Doris' blond hair and fastened up her frock
in the back, both operations being impeded by the wrigglings of the
stalwart infant in her lap.

"I like to smell 'fumery," announced the young person, at the conclusion
of her toilet, "an' I love--I jus' love to hear pennies jingle in my
pocket. Can I empty the money out of my bank now, mother? Can I?" She
swung backward and forward on her toes like a bird poised for flight.

"You must eat your breakfast and go to school," Elizabeth said, trying
hard to keep her rising impatience out of her voice. "And after
school----"

"After school can I take my bank? The very minute it's out? Can I,
mother; can I?"

"You should say _may_ I; not _can_ I, Doris. Yes; if you're a good girl
in kindergarten, and keep hold of Carroll's hand all the way going and
coming, why then----"

"I don't like to take hold of hands with Carroll," objected Doris,
drawing her lips into a scarlet bud. "I like to walk by my lone; but I
promise I won't get run over or anything. I'll be just as good!"

It wasn't far to the little school where both children spent the
morning. Elizabeth watched her darlings quite to the corner, pleased to
observe that they were clinging obediently to each other's hands and
apparently engaged in amicable conversation.

Then her thoughts turned with some anxiety upon the approaching visit of
Miss Tripp. She was very fond of Evelyn Tripp, she assured herself, and
if it were not for Celia, and the spare-room (which needed new curtains,
new paper and a larger rug to cover the worn place in the carpet), and
if--she wrinkled her pretty forehead unbecomingly--the children could
only be depended upon. One could not safely predict the conduct of Doris
from hour to hour; and while, of course, Carroll was the best child in
the world; still, even Carroll--upon occasions--could be very trying to
the nerves. As for Richard, he was the baby; and no one, not even Evelyn
Tripp, could fail to understand the subordinate position of the average
household in its relations to the baby of the house. She kissed and
hugged the small tyrant rapturously, while she set forth a plenitude of
building-blocks, picture-books, trains, engines and wagons of miniature
sizes and brilliant colours calculated to enchain the infant attention.

"Now, darling," she cooed, "here are all your pretty playthings; sit
right down and play, and be a good little man, while mother runs out in
the kitchen a minute to see what Celia is doing."

Richard surveyed his spread-out possessions with a distinctly bored
expression on his round cherubic countenance. He had seen and handled
those trains, wagons, engines and blocks many, many times before, and
they did not appeal to his infant imagination with the same alluring
force as did some other objects in the room. Had his mother seen fit to
install the scarlet locomotive, for example, on the lofty mantle-piece
with a stern interdiction upon it, it would doubtless have appeared
supremely attractive. But the infant mind does not differ in essentials
from that of the adult. The difficult, the forbidden, the almost
unattainable fires the ambition and stiffens the will. There was a glass
tank in the bay-window, situated on what appeared to Richard as a lofty
and well-nigh inaccessible table. It contained a large quantity of water
of a greenish hue, as well as a number of swift-moving, glittering,
golden things which flashed in and out between the green, waving plants
rooted in the sand at the bottom.

Now Richard had been sternly forbidden to touch this enticing
combination of objects. Nevertheless he had done it; not only once, but
twice--thrice. He recalled with rapture the cool, slippery feel of the
stones; the entrancing drip and gurgle of the water; the elusive,
flitting shapes of the yellow things, "sishes," he called them fondly,
which an adroit hand could occasionally manage to seize and hold for a
brief instant.

A stray sunbeam darted into the aquarium and lit up its mysterious
depths with irresistible gorgeousness. Richard gazed and gazed; then he
turned and kicked the red locomotive; under the impact of his pudgy foot
it dashed with futile energy into the ruck of wagons, cars and
building-blocks and lay there on its side, its feeble little wheels
turning slowly.

"Nas'y ol' twain!" muttered the infant disgustedly.

IV

Meanwhile Elizabeth in her kitchen was busy unearthing divers culinary
crimes in the various cupboards and closets where the stolid Celia
displayed a positive ingenuity in concealing the evidences of her
misdoings. It was not perhaps to be wondered at that the untutored
Norwegian should elect to boil her dish-cloth with the embroidered
doilies from the dining-room; or that the soap should be discovered in a
state of gelatinous collapse in the bottom of the scrubbing pail and the
new cereal cooker burning gaily on the range. But Elizabeth's strained
patience finally snapped in twain at sight of a pile of parti-coloured
bits of china in the bottom of the coal-hod.

"My best salad bowl!" she exclaimed, stooping to examine the grimy
fragments. "When did you break it, Celia?"

The girl was standing at the sink, presenting her broad back like a
solidly built wall against the rising tide of her mistress'
indignation. Her big blond head sank forward over her dish-pan; a
guttural murmur issued from her lips.

"And I have always been so careful of it! It was one of my wedding
presents!" continued Elizabeth, in a fine crescendo. "How did you do
it?"

The girl had turned on both faucets, and the descending torrent of
rushing water drowned the anguished inquiry.

"You know I told you never to touch that bowl. I preferred to wash it
myself. You must have taken it out of the dining-room. Why did you do
it?"

"I no take heem out--naw! I smash heem when I move the side-brood." The
girl's broad magenta-tinted face was turned suddenly upon her mistress.
She appeared excessively pleased with her mastery of the difficult
English tongue. "I scrub ze floor; I s-m-a-s-h heem," she repeated
positively.

Elizabeth drew a deep breath. Scrubbing was Celia's one distinguished
accomplishment. The spotless floors and table and the shining faucets
and utensils bore evidence to the earnestness of her purpose and the
undeniable strength of her arms.

"You didn't mean to do it, I am sure," she said at last, with a
renunciatory sigh; "but remember in future you must not move the dishes
on the side-board unless I am there to help you."

"I no move heem; I s-m-a-s-h heem."

"Yes, I understand; but don't do it again."

"I no s-m-a-s-h heem 'gain--Naw!" The girl's china blue eyes gazed
guilelessly into the depths of the coal-hod; she lifted them with a
triumphant smile upon her mistress. "I _have_--s-m-ash!"

The trill of the door-bell put an end to this improving conversation;
Elizabeth answered it herself by way of the sitting-room, where she
paused to remove Richard, damp and dripping, from an ecstatic
exploration of the gold-fish tank. The sound of his passionate protest
followed her to the front door and lent a crisp decision to her tones as
she informed a gentleman of an Hebraic cast of countenance that she did
not wish to exchange old shoes of any description for "an elegant
sauce-pan, lady; cost you one dollar in the store. Only one pair shoes,
lady, this grand piece; cost you one dol----"

Elizabeth shut the door firmly upon the glittering temptation and
returned to her youngest born, who was weeping large tears of wrath in
the middle of the sitting-room floor.

"Come up stairs with mother, Richard; your sleeves are all wet,"
exhorted his mother, struggling with a sudden temptation. It would have
been a relief to her feelings to spank him soundly, and she acknowledged
as much to herself.

"Come, dear," she repeated, in a carefully controlled voice. But
Richard's fat legs doubled limply under him; he appeared unable to take
a single step; whereupon his slender mother masterfully picked him up,
despite the mysterious increase in his weight which she had had frequent
occasion to notice in the person of an angry child.

It was useless at the present moment to remind her son of oft-repeated
prohibitions concerning the gold-fish tank. Elizabeth pondered the
question of an appropriate penalty with knit brows, while she washed and
dressed him in dry garments to the accompaniment of his doleful sobs.

"Now, Richard, you must stay in your crib till you can be a good boy and
mind mother," was the somewhat vague sentence of the maternal court at
the conclusion of the necessary rehabilitation, whereupon the infant
howled anew as if under acute bodily torture.

As she turned to pick up the wet clothing a cheerful voice called her to
the top of the stairs. "Shall I come up, dear? Your kitchen divinity
admitted me and told me to walk right in."

"Oh,--Marian; I'll be right down. I've had to dress Dick over again, and
everything's in confusion. Go in the sitting-room, please."

Elizabeth wanted time to collect herself before meeting the cool, amused
eyes of Marian Stanford, whose ideas on the government of children were
so wholly at variance with her own.

"When you are ready to be a good boy, Richard, you may call mother and I
will come up and take you out of your crib," was her parting observation
to the culprit.

"Oh, Elizabeth, dear; I'm afraid I interrupted a little maternal
seance," was Mrs. Stanford's greeting. "No? Well, I'm glad if I haven't.
It does vex me so when someone chances to call just as I am having it
out with one of the infants."

"Richard got his sleeves wet," explained Richard's mother, with what the
other mentally termed "a really funny air of dignity."

Mrs. Stanford's uplifted eyebrows and a flitting glance in the direction
of the gold-fish tank expressed her complete understanding of the
matter.

"I remember you told me your child was fond of fishing," she murmured.
"So like his dear father."

Elizabeth's tense mouth relaxed into a smile. The howls upstairs had
ceased; but she was conscious of waiting for something, she hardly knew
what, to follow.

"Do tell me what you do in a case like this?" pursued Mrs. Stanford
guilefully. "You know I'm perfectly willing to abandon my crude attempts
at training the infant mind the instant you, or anybody, can show me
something more efficient than my beloved butter-paddle. I tell Jim the
B. P. is my best friend these days. It is absolutely the only thing
that intimidates Robert in the slightest degree."

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. "_Intimidates?_" she repeated.

Mrs. Stanford laughed. "Yes; intimidates. My dear, that child is a
terror! I'm at my wit's end with him half the time; and as for
Livingstone, he's going to be worse; I can see that already."

Elizabeth hesitated while the warm colour dyed her cheeks. "You know
what I think about terrifying children into obedience, Marian; and I
know what you think. We really oughtn't to discuss it."

The fine scorn in her eyes suddenly gave place to a look of alarm at
sound of an appalling thump on the floor above. She darted from the room
and up the stairs to the accompaniment of roars of anguish.

Marian Stanford moved her handsome shoulders gently. "She must have put
Richard in his crib and told him to stay there," was her entirely
correct supposition. "Of course he didn't stay put."

Marian Stanford was a graduate of Wellesley, and her mind filled with
fragments of imperfectly acquired science not infrequently chanced upon
a suggestive sequence. She could not resist the temptation to share her
present gleam of enlightenment with dear Elizabeth (who had never been
to college) when she presently returned, bearing Richard in her arms.
The child was still drawing convulsive, half-sobbing breaths, and a
handkerchief wet with witch hazel was laid across his forehead.

"He fell out of his crib, poor darling!" explained Elizabeth.

"I suppose you had told him not to get out?"

Elizabeth eyed her friend speculatively over the top of her baby's curly
head. It was useless to be offended with Marian; she never seemed to be
aware of it.

"You were about to say something enlightening," she observed with
delicate sarcasm. "You may as well out with it."

Mrs. Stanford smiled appreciatively. "You always were a clever creature,
Elizabeth," she drawled; "but had it occurred to you that I would never
have thought of thumping my child as the law of gravitation thumped
yours just now? You wouldn't punish a certain young person for
disobeying because you are so anxious to spare him pain; but I should
say he'd been punished pretty severely--corporal punishment at that!"

"The poor darling fell out of his crib, Marian, and hurt himself. Any
child might do that."

Marian Stanford got to her feet lazily. She was one of those women who
manage to accomplish a great deal of work with the least possible
apparent effort. All her movements were deliberate, even indolent.
Elizabeth envied her sometimes in the midst of her own somewhat
breathless exertions.

"I came over to get your pattern for Carroll's blouse," she said; "not
to discuss the government of children. But we seem to be at it, as
usual. What I meant to convey was commonplace enough; if you had seen
fit to settle the matter of the fish tank with a sound spanking,
administered on the spot, Richard might not--mind I do not say would
not--but he might not have acquired this particular thump at the hands
of Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did. It just occurred to me, dear, and you
know I never could keep my thoughts to myself as I should."

Elizabeth arose, deposited her child on the couch and produced a roll of
patterns from a drawer in her desk. "Here is the blouse, Marian," she
said; "you'll need to cut it larger for Robbie; he is so broad in the
shoulders. Be careful about the collar, though, or you'll get it too big
around the neck."

Marian Stanford was weak when it came to sewing. Elizabeth felt herself
again as she saw the puzzled look in her friend's face. "This is the
neck-band," she explained, "and this is the collar. You must be careful
not to stretch the cloth after you have cut it. But you know perfectly
well, Marian, that we _never_ shall think alike about the way to bring
up children. I simply will not whip my children--no matter what they do!
They are not animals to be tortured into submission."

Mrs. Stanford laughed good-humouredly. "I'm afraid mine are," she said.
"But never mind, Betty; we won't quarrel over it; you're too sweetly
useful, and frankly I can't afford to. If I get into a mess over this
blouse I shall come over to be extricated."

Ten minutes later Elizabeth was surprised to hear her husband's rapid
foot in the hall. She ran to meet him with an anxious face.

"Nothing's the matter, dear," he said at once; "that is to say, nothing
alarming. I was over this way to see Biddle & Crofut and ran in to tell
you that Miss Tripp telephoned to the office this morning to inform me
that she'd been called into town a day earlier than she expected to
come, and would I--could I get word to her dearest Elizabeth that she
would be with her this afternoon."

Elizabeth drew a deep breath. "Well," she said resignedly; "Celia is
sweeping the spare room, and I'm making some new curtains out of my old
muslin dress; you'll be surprised to see how well they'll look, Sam. But
I've only a rice pudding for dessert, and----"

"I might order some ice-cream," he suggested, "and some--er----"

A sudden suspicion assailed his Elizabeth; she gazed searchingly at her
husband. "You haven't told me all," she said. "Don't overwhelm me by
saying that Mrs. Tripp is coming too."

He met her inquiring eyes rather shamefacedly. "To tell you the truth,
Betty, Hickey chanced to be in the office at the time the Tripp lady
telephoned, and I--er--recalled what you said last night; so I----"

"You _didn't_ ask Mr. Hickey to dinner to-night, Sam?"

"Why not? Aside from any sentimental considerations George is good
company; and he's very appreciative of a certain little home-maker I
know, and of the dinners he's eaten here in the past."

"But it seems so--sudden!"

He roared with laughter. "'In your mind's eye, Horatio,'" he quoted,
when he had recovered himself somewhat. "You must remember, my dear,
that neither the Tripp lady nor Hickey are aware of your Machiavellian
designs upon their future."

"Mr. Hickey wasn't a part of my _designs_, as you call them," she
reminded him with spirit. "I merely said that I wished poor Evelyn could
find some nice suitable man, and you said----"

"We certainly owe the lady a 'suitable' article of some sort or other,"
he observed, with a reminiscent twinkle in his blue eyes, "if it's
nothing more than a husband, and I'd like you to understand, Betty, that
Hickey is my candidate."

She glanced at her watch with a little shriek of dismay. "We mustn't
waste another minute talking," she said. "Evelyn will be here before I'm
half ready for her."

V

An unlooked for guest, involving new curtains for the guest-room, did
not prevent Elizabeth from the conscientious discharge of her maternal
duties. She resolved for once to play the stern part of Mrs.
Be-done-by-as-you-did.

Richard was playing with his blocks with perfect equanimity, a large
black and blue lump on his forehead marking his recent experience with
the undeviating law of gravitation. He gave utterance to a little yelp
of protest as his mother took him up in her lap with a firm hand.

"You know, Richard," she said solemnly, "that mother has told you ever
so many times that you must not put your hand into the aquarium where
the pretty gold-fish live. Why didn't you mind mother?"

There being a new link established in the chain of associations
connected with the gold-fish, the infant put his fat hand to the lump on
his forehead and gazed unwinkingly at his parent.

"I like to sp'ash water," he announced conclusively. "I like bafs."

Elizabeth reflected that in a rudimentary way her child was endeavouring
to make clear his motives, and even to place them on a praiseworthy
basis. A feeling of pride in the distinguished intelligence of her
children swelled within her; she suppressed it as she went on with an
impressive show of maternal authority.

"Yes, Richard; mother knows you like to take your bath; but we don't
take baths with the gold-fish. Besides, you got your nice clean dress
all wet, and made poor mother a great deal of trouble. Then, when mother
told you to stay in your crib, you disobeyed again and got a dreadful
bump."

The infant appeared to ponder these indubitable statements for a space.
Then he broke into an ingratiating smile. "I was tomin' to tell mudzer I
was a dood boy," he said earnestly. "Zen I bumped my head."

The violet depths of his eyes under their upturned lashes were
altogether adorable; so was his pink mouth, half parted and curved
exquisitely like the petals of a flower. Elizabeth's arms closed round
her treasure; her lips brushed the warm rose of his cheeks.

"Darling!" she murmured, for the moment quite losing sight of the fact
that she was engaged in the difficult task of moral suasion. Elizabeth
was almost guiltily open to the appeal of infantile beauty as opposed to
the stern demands of discipline. The sight of a dimple, appearing and
disappearing in a soft cheek, the quiver of baby lips; the irresistible
twinkle of dawning humour in baby eyes were enough to distract her mind
from any number of infantile peccadillos, and it is to be feared that
the exceedingly intelligent Brewster children had become aware of it.

"I am a dood boy," repeated Richard, with a bewitching glance at his
parent. Then his chin quivered pathetically and he raised his hand to
his head and peered out from under his pink palm. "I bumped my head on
ze floor."

Elizabeth hardened her heart against these multiplied fascinations. "You
disobeyed mother twice," she said sternly. "I shall have to do something
to make you remember not to touch the gold-fish again."

She looked about her somewhat uncertainly as if in search of a suitable
yet entirely safe idea. "I think," she said solemnly, "that I shall tie
you to the arm of this big chair for--_ten minutes_!"

The corners of Richard's pink mouth suddenly drooped as this terrible
sentence of the maternal court was pronounced.

"I am a dood boy, mudzer," he quavered. "I bumped my head on ze floor
an' I cwied!"

Two dimpled arms were thrown about Elizabeth's neck and a curly head
burrowed passionately into her bosom. "I love 'oo, mudzer; I am a dood
boy!"

"I know you mean to be good, darling!" exclaimed Elizabeth, her heart
melting within her; "but you do forget so often. Mother wants to help
you to remember."

But the intelligent infant had given himself up to an unpremeditated
luxury of grief, and Elizabeth found herself in the unexpected position
of a suppliant consoler. She begged her child to stop crying; she kissed
the black and blue spot on his forehead and soothed him with soft
murmurs and gentle caresses, and when finally he had sobbed himself to
sleep in her arms, she bestowed the moist rosy little bundle on the
couch, covering him warmly; then, with a parting pat and cuddle, sat
down to her belated work on the spare-room curtains, feeling that she
had been very severe indeed with her youngest child.

Richard was still rosily asleep and Elizabeth was hurriedly attaching
the ruffles to one of the improvised curtains when Celia, with two
buttons off her frock in the back and a broad streak of stove-blacking
across her honest red face, announced "one nize lady."

Elizabeth sprang to her feet in sudden consternation at sight of the
small square of white pasteboard with which Celia prefaced her
announcement.

Mrs. J. Mortimer Van Duser was a distant relative of Samuel Brewster's,
and it pleased her to be kind, in an imposing and majestic
manner--entirely suited to her own imposing and majestic person--to his
"little family," as she invariably termed it. Elizabeth had assured her
husband on more than one occasion that she did not feel the least
embarrassment in that august presence; but her heart still flew to her
mouth at sight of the entirely correct equipage from Beacon Street, and
she always found herself drawing a long breath of unconfessed relief
when it rolled away after one of Mrs. Van Duser's infrequent visits.

When presently Mrs. Van Duser, large, bland and encased in broadcloth
and sables, entered, she bestowed a gracious kiss upon Elizabeth's
cheek, and seated herself in a straight-backed chair with the effect of
a magistrate about to administer justice.

"I trust you received the little brochure I mailed you last week," was
her initial remark, accompanied by a searching glance at Elizabeth's
agitated face. "I refer to 'Anthropological investigations on one
thousand children, white and coloured.' I looked it over most carefully
and marked the passages I deemed particularly helpful and suggestive."

"Thank you, Mrs. Van Duser," faltered Elizabeth, "I did get the book,
and I--was intending to write to you to-day to thank you for it."

"Have you read it?" inquired Mrs. Van Duser pointedly.

"I--looked it over, and--it appeared very----"

Mrs. Van Duser's steadfast gaze appeared to demand the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. Elizabeth's eyes fell before it. "It
was very good of you to--to think of me," she said.

"I think of you not infrequently," was the lady's gracious rejoinder,
"and more particularly of your children, who are, of course, distantly
related to myself. I cannot urge too strongly, or too often, the need of
a scientific study of infancy and childhood as causally related to the
proper functional development of your offspring."

"I am sure it is most kind of you," murmured Elizabeth, striving to
kindle an appreciative glow. "But--I have so little time."

"You have all the time there is, my dear Elizabeth," chanted Mrs. Van
Duser, in her justly celebrated platform tone; "and you should strive
above all things to distinguish what is significant and essential from
what is trivial and accidental." Her voice sank to a heart-searching
contralto, as she added, "I have observed that you have time to sew
trimming on your child's frock. What is trimming as compared with the
demands of the springing intellect?"

Elizabeth blushed guiltily and murmured something unintelligible.

"Did you study the passages marked in 'Nascent Stages and their
Significance,' which I sent you the week before?--particularly those on
'The feelings and their expression'?" asked Mrs. Van Duser, after a
weighty pause.

Elizabeth drew a deep breath. "I--found it not altogether easy to
understand," she said guilefully.

"For an untrained mind--no," agreed Mrs. Van Duser blandly. "I feared as
much, and I have come this morning because I wished to go over with you
somewhat exhaustively the points mentioned by the author, in order to
compare them with your own more practical experience. I am about to
present a paper before the Ontological Club on 'The Emotive States as
factors in the education of The Child,' which I feel sure should prove
invaluable to all thoughtful parents. I had intended," she added, with a
mordant emphasis on the past tense of the verb, "to dedicate the
brochure to you upon publication."

At this point in the conversation, and before Elizabeth had time to
express her blended contrition, gratitude and appreciation, two
hurriedly slammed doors and the clatter of small feet in the passage
announced the return of the children from school.

Mrs. Van Duser's severe expression relaxed perceptibly. "How very
fortunate," she observed. "I was hoping for an opportunity of studying
certain phenomena at first hand. You know, my dear, I so seldom see
children."

Elizabeth's tender heart was touched by the unconscious wistfulness in
the older woman's eyes. But she sighed at sight of the gilt-edged
memorandum book in the hands of her guest. She was familiar with the
exhaustive methods employed by Mrs. Van Duser in the pursuit of
knowledge.

"You will not, I hope, interrupt any normal procedure," that lady was
saying in a sprightly tone, calculated to restore the depressed spirits
of the younger matron to their usual level. "I should like--if I may--to
observe the children at their luncheon, since the sense stimuli
connected with the taking of food is exceedingly instructive as related
to the cosmic consciousness."

"I shall be very happy to have you lunch with us," faltered Elizabeth,
her thoughts busying themselves with a futile review of the contents of
her larder. Then the door flew open and Carroll and Doris dashed in,
breathless and eager, to precipitate their small persons upon their
mother's lap.

"I was a _nawful_ good girl in kindergarten, mother!" announced Doris,
dancing with impatience, "an' I didn't get run over, or anythin'. When
can I go to the store an' spend all my money, mother? _When?_ Can I go
_now_?"

"Doris, dear; don't you see Mrs. Van Duser? and Carroll----"

But the boy had already advanced politely, and was standing before the
magisterial presence with a funny little air of resignation to the
inevitable which forced a smile to his mother's serious lips.

"Can you tell me, my boy, why you experience pleasure at the sight of
your mother?" demanded Mrs. Van Duser, gazing searchingly at the child
through her gold-mounted lorgnettes.

"I--like my mother, better'n any body else," replied the boy, with a
worried pucker of his smooth forehead.

"_Like?_" echoed his inquisitor, looking up from a hurriedly pencilled
note. "And what, pray, do you mean by 'like'?"

"I mean I--love her, because she's the bestest person I know."

"Is it because she gives you food when you are hungry that you love your
parent? Or can you give me another reason?" continued Mrs. Van Duser,
ignoring the comprehensive statement advanced by the boy.

Carroll glanced doubtfully after his mother, as she hastily withdrew to
look after the luncheon table.

"I--don't know," he stammered. "I guess I like her when I'm hungry just
the same."

"C., aged eight years, unable to enumerate reasons for fondness of
parent," wrote Mrs. Van Duser, with every appearance of satisfaction.
"The reasoning faculties apparently dormant at this age."

"What are you most afraid of?" was her next question, accompanied by an
ingratiating smile, calculated to disarm youthful timidity.

At this moment Richard, who had been peacefully asleep on the sofa,
awoke, and becoming slowly aware of the majestic presence at his side,
set up a doleful cry.

Whereupon Mrs. Van Duser noted neatly that "an unexpected visual
impression evidently caused anxiety, without any assignable reason, in
the normal infant R."

And when the normal infant scrambled down from the couch and retreated
kitchenward under the careful supervision of his older brother, she
observed further that "the dawning of the paternal instinct of
protection was observable in the child C."

VI

The conduct of the children at the luncheon table was marked by such
unexampled propriety of manner that Mrs. Van Duser was visibly
disappointed. She could hardly have been expected to know that Elizabeth
had resorted to shameless bribery in advance of the meal with a shining
coin in each small pocket, "to be spent exactly as you choose," and that
Richard was taking his food in the kitchen under the lax supervision of
the Norwegian maid. Still the occasion was not wholly barren of material
for a trained psychologist, as Mrs. Van Duser was pleased to term
herself.

"The psychophysical processes," she observed learnedly, "should be
closely observed by the wise guardian, in order to properly graft
desired complications on native reactions."

"I am afraid I do not altogether understand," murmured Elizabeth,
secretly grateful that her guest's preoccupation of mind rendered her
oblivious to the blunders of Celia, as she plodded heavily about the
table. "But I should like to ask you, Mrs. Van Duser, if you approve
of--whipping children?"

Mrs. Van Duser dropped her pencil and focussed her piercing regard upon
the wife of her distant relative.

"Decidedly not, my dear Elizabeth," she enunciated in her deepest
contralto. "Corporal punishment brutalises the child by implying that a
rational being is, or may be, on the level of the animal. It can be only
too evident that if one treats a child like an animal, it will behave
like an animal. I will send you an excellent pamphlet on the subject,
which you will do well to study. In the meantime you should
remember----"

Mrs. Van Duser stopped short, raised her lorgnette and stared hard at
Doris. That young person had suddenly left her chair and was whispering
in her mother's ear, in the peculiar, sibilant whisper of an eager
child.

"I'm through of my dinner, mother," was wafted distinctly to the
attentive ears of the guest. "An' I want to go an' buy daddy's 'fumery
this minute. You said I might, mother; you said I might.--Yes; but
_when_ is she going home, mother? _when?_"

Far from evincing displeasure the great lady displayed the sincerest
gratification. "A most interesting example of ideation," she observed.
"My dear Elizabeth, please explain the child's emotions, if you are
aware of them. I fail to observe anger or dislike, or even--as might
well be expected--awe. Why do you wish me to go home?" she inquired
directly of Doris, who had retreated behind her mother's chair in
pouting dismay.

Elizabeth experienced a hysterical desire to laugh; but she instantly
repressed it. "You should explain to Mrs. Van Duser, Doris, that you
spilled father's bay-rum this morning, and that mother said you must buy
him a fresh bottle with your own money," she said soberly.

"I want to go _now_," whispered the child. "You said I might, mother;
you _promised_!"

"Excellent!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Duser, writing rapidly in her book. "You
really ought, my dear Elizabeth, to preserve a careful memoranda of
these interesting mental movements of your offspring," she observed
convincingly. "Every properly constructed parent should endeavour to so
assist science. However crudely and unscientifically expressed, such
records would prove of incalculable value to the student."

She turned to Doris with a complete change of manner. It was no longer
the ontological Mrs. Van Duser, but the great lady from Beacon Street
who spoke. "You have been very rude indeed, my child," she said sternly;
"and little girls should never be rude; but I will take you with me in
the carriage to purchase the toilet article referred to, and send you
home afterwards, if your mother will permit."

As Elizabeth watched the flushed and triumphant Doris, departing in
state in the Van Duser carriage, the jingling contents of her bank in
her small pocket, she was conscious of a bewildering sense of failure.
She had sincerely tried to impress a lesson of obedience and a respect
for the rights of others upon the mind of her child, and, lo! the
culprit was enjoying a long-wished-for treat!

The arrival of Miss Evelyn Tripp, in a hansom cab with a small
much-belabelled trunk on top, successfully diverted her mind from this
and other ethical problems. Miss Tripp's recent misfortunes had as yet
left no traces on her slight, elegant personality. She entered quite in
her old fashion, amid a subdued rustle of soft silken garments, a
flutter of plumes and a gracious odour of violets.

"My dear!" she exclaimed, clasping and kissing Elizabeth, quite in the
latest mode. "How well you are looking! Indeed, you are younger and far,
far prettier than the day you were married! How vividly I remember that
day, and I am sure you do! How I did work to have everything pass off as
it should, and so many persons have told me since that it was really the
sweetest wedding they ever saw! It hardly seems possible that it was so
long ago. What! You don't tell me that great boy is Carroll! Come here
and let Aunty Evelyn kiss you, dear. And Doris? She was such a dear,
tiny thing when I saw her last. Oh, that is the baby; you say! No;
Elizabeth--not that great child! Fancy! I declare I feel like a
Methuselah when I look at my friend's children. I hate to grow
old--really old; don't you know."

Miss Tripp paused to remove her plumed hat, while Elizabeth hastened to
assure her friend that she really hadn't changed in the least. This was
quite true, since Miss Tripp was of that somewhat thin and colourless
type of American womanhood upon which the passing years appear to leave
little trace.

"Oh, my dear!" sighed Miss Tripp, "I am changed; everything has changed
with me, I assure you. Mother and I are obliged to live off air, exactly
like wee little church mice. And I am simply worn to a fringe trying to
economise and manage. I never was extravagant; you know that, dear, but
now----. Well; I don't know what will become of us unless something
happens."

"Something will happen, dear," said Elizabeth, more than ever
warm-heartedly determined to make her friend as happy as herself. "Now
I'm going to leave you to lie down and rest a little before dinner," she
added guilefully, as she bethought herself of the various culinary
operations already in progress under the unthinking control of Celia. "A
friend of Sam's--a Mr. Hickey, chances to be dining here to-night; I
hope you won't mind, dear. It--just happened so."

Miss Tripp turned to gaze searchingly at her friend. "You can't mean
George Hickey--a civil engineer?" she asked.

"Why, yes; do you know him?"

"My dear; it's the oddest thing; but lately I seem to meet that man
wherever I go. He is a friend of the Gerald Doolittles in
Dorchester--you know who I mean--and spends a Sunday there occasionally;
and when I was visiting Leticia Marston last fall, lo and behold! Mr.
Hickey turned up there for the week end! I used to know him years ago
when we were both children."

"Sam is associated with Mr. Hickey in a professional way," observed
Elizabeth, with a careful indifference of manner. "He dines with us once
in a while." She paused to listen, with her head on one side, while a
look of alarm stole over her attentive face.

"What's the matter, dear?" inquired the unaccustomed Miss Tripp. "Do you
hear anything?"

"No, Evelyn; I don't, and the silence is suspicious. I think I'll run
down stairs and see what the boys are doing. Try and rest, dear, till I
call you." And Elizabeth accomplished a hasty exit by way of the back
stairs and the kitchen, where she was in time to frustrate the
intelligent Celia as she was about putting the French peas over to boil
an hour before dinner time. From thence she sought the sitting-room,
where she had left her two sons amicably engaged in constructing a tall
and wobbly tower out of building blocks. Carroll had vanished, and her
amazed and indignant eyes lighted upon the person of her youngest son
kneeling in a chair before the forbidden aquarium, over which he leaned
in a state of rapturous oblivion of past experiences, his plump hands
buried in the sand at the bottom of the tank, while the alarmed gold
fish flashed in and out between the dripping sleeves of his
freshly-ironed blouse.

"Richard Brewster!" she cried. Then wrath and a disheartening sense of
the futility of unassisted moral suasion quite swept her off her feet.
She seized the child and laying him across her lap in time-honoured
fashion, handed down from a remote ancestry, spanked him with a speed
and thoroughness not to be surpassed by Grandmother Carroll in her most
energetic mood.

VII

Elizabeth was fluttering anxiously about the table in her small
dining-room when her husband entered in his usual breezy fashion and
laid a bunch of fragrant carnations before her.

"A finishing touch for your table, Betty," he said; and added with
lover-like enthusiasm, "My! how pretty you're looking to-night!"

"I shouldn't think I'd look pretty after the day I've put in," she told
him as she arranged the flowers in water. "Sam, Mrs. Van Duser was here
to luncheon."

"No?"

"She came to ask me if I had read 'Anthropological Investigations on one
thousand children, white and colored,' and I hadn't even looked at it."

"So you flatly flunked the exam; poor Betty!"

"Not exactly, Sam; I--told her I didn't quite--understand the subject."

"Ah, Machiavellian Betty! Did she tumble?"

"Oh, Sam! what a way to speak of Mrs. Van Duser. I was the one to
tumble, as you call it. She graciously picked me up. Of course Doris was
naughty, and Celia spilled cocoa on the table-cloth and passed
everything on the wrong side. Then after Mrs. Van Duser went, Evelyn
came.--She's up-stairs now, dressing for dinner. And--after that--I
don't know what you'll think of me, Sam; but I--was nervous or something
I think, and I--whipped Richard."

"You--what?"

"After all I've said about Marian Stanford, too! I just hate myself for
doing it. But I had dressed that child twice all clean, and when I came
down to see about dinner and found him playing in the aquarium _again_,
Sam, dripping water all over the floor, and with his clothes soaked to
the skin, I just seemed to lose all control of myself. I snatched the
poor darling up and--and--spanked him as hard as I could. The strange
part of it is that I--seemed to enjoy doing it."

Her doleful air of abject contrition was too much for Sam. He roared
with irrepressible laughter. "Forgive me, Betty," he entreated; "but
really, you know----"

"I understand now exactly why people whip their children," went on
Elizabeth, descending into abysmal depths of humility and grovelling
there with visible satisfaction. "I gave way to uncontrollable rage just
because I knew I must take the trouble to dress the poor little darling
again, and I couldn't think for the minute what flannels to put on him.
So I revenged myself, in just a common, spiteful, vulgar way. No, Sam;
you needn't try to make light of what I did. Nothing can excuse it!"

At that instant the misused infant, dragging a train of iron cars behind
him, hove into view.

"Chu-chu-chu!" he droned. "Det out the way! Here tomes the 'spress
train!" His cherubic countenance was serene and rosy; he beamed
impartially upon his parents as he scuffed across the floor.

"Well," said his father, endeavouring (unsuccessfully) to view the
matter in a serious light, "I fail to observe any signs of violent abuse
or tokens of abject fear about the young person; I guess you didn't----"

"Hush, Sam! I hope he's forgotten it--the darling! Do you love mother,
baby?"

"I'm a dreat big engine-man!" vociferated the infant, submitting
cheerfully to his mother's kisses, "an' I love 'oo more'n a sousand
million! Chu-chu! Toot-toot! Ding-dong!"

"How about the other young Brewsters?" inquired their father, with a
twinkle of mock solicitude in his blue eyes. "Have they been pursuing
the undeviating paths of rectitude, or have you--er--been moved to----"

"Sam, if you make fun of me about--what I did to Richard, I----" her
voice broke, and she hid her eyes on his shoulder. "I thought," she
said, "that it was my duty to tell you."

"I'm not making fun of you, little woman. Perish the thought!" and he
kissed her convincingly. "I don't know what I should--or shouldn't
do--if I had to cope with the young miscreants single-handed all day.
Where is Doris, by the way?"

She told him about the broken bay-rum bottle, and described the scene at
the luncheon table. "I was so ashamed," she concluded; "but what could I
do?"

"Let me laugh again, Betty!" he begged. "That's too much, you know.
Fancy our small Doris having the--er--audacity to stand up and audibly
hint that Mrs. J. Mortimer Van Duser's room would be more acceptable
than her company. I wish I'd been there to see and hear."

"Mrs. Van Duser said that it was a most interesting example of
ideation--whatever that is," said his Elizabeth rather proudly. "She's
writing a paper for the Ontological Club, and she's going to put all
three of the children in."

"As what--Concrete examples of the genus _enfant terrible_?" he inquired
cautiously.

Elizabeth was surveying her table with satisfied eyes. She did not
appear to have heard his question.

"It may be hard work to take care of all that silver and glass we had
for wedding presents, Sam," she said thoughtfully; "but on occasions it
is useful."

"Yes; if the foreigner in the kitchen didn't too often turn our dancing
into mourning by smashing it."

"I'm not going to let Celia wash one of these dishes," she told him
firmly.

"Who is going to wash them?" he asked resignedly.

"I am--after Mr. Hickey's gone and Evelyn's in bed."

"'That means me,'" he quoted irreverently. "I'm a thoroughly
house-broken husband, and you can depend upon me, Betty, every shot."

She flashed him a grateful smile. "Of course I know that, Sam," was all
she said; but her eyes were eloquent of love and happy trust. "What do
you think, Sam," she added irrelevantly; "Evelyn has known Mr. Hickey a
long time already."

"So much the better for Hickey!"

"Yes; that's what I thought. You see, Sam, if--if anything should
happen, it wouldn't be all our doing; and so in a way, Sam, I actually
felt relieved when Evelyn said that she had met Mr. Hickey before. It is
really an awful responsibility."

"What? to ask Hickey to dinner? He didn't seem to mind it."

"Don't be flippant, Sam," she said with dignity. "You know perfectly
well what I mean. If Mr. Hickey _should_ fall in love with Evelyn--and I
will say that she never looked more attractive than she does now--and
if she should----"

He interrupted her with a hasty kiss. "I've got to go up and dress," he
reminded her. "Don't you worry, Betty; if he should, and she should,
then they both would; and all you and I would be required to do would be
to buy them a clock that wouldn't go, or a dozen _pâté de foies gras_
implements--only let it be something useful. By the way, I see you've
set the table for the children. Do you think that is--er--exactly the
part of wisdom?"

"No, Sam; I do not. But I had to make it up to Richard someway, so I
promised to let him have dinner with us, and Evelyn quite insisted upon
the others. She thinks Carroll simply perfect, and she says Doris is the
most fascinating child she ever saw."

"Well," he acquiesced, "they're the biggest and best half of the
Brewster family, when you come to think of it, and Hickey always wants
to see them when he comes."

Half an hour later Elizabeth was putting the finishing touches to her
toilet, while the children, immaculate and shining, hovered admiringly
about the dressing-table.

"Now remember, Carroll, you mustn't get to quarrelling with Doris about
anything."

"I won't, mother; I promise."

"We're going to have ice-cream for dessert, and----"

"Oh-e-e!" in a rapturous chorus from all the children.

"I don't want you to make that noise when Celia brings it in to the
table; that's why I'm telling you beforehand."

Richard was pirouetting heavily on his little stubbed shoes. "Oh-e-e!"
he repeated, "ice-cweam!"

"Now, do you think you can remember?" asked Elizabeth, clasping a string
of gold beads about her pretty throat, and turning to meet the three
pairs of upturned eyes. "I want Aunty Evelyn to think you've improved a
great deal since the last time she was here. You weren't very good that
time."

Carroll's clear gaze met his mother's reprovingly. "Do you want Aunty
Evelyn to think we've improved, if we haven't?" he asked. "Because we're
really getting badder most every day."

"You're badder, you mean," said Doris, with a superior and pitying
smile; "I'm as good 's I can be. Mrs. Van Duser said I was a very
inter-est-in' 'zample of a child. So there!"

Carroll shook his head. "I'm not going to quarrel with you, Doris,
'cause I promised mother I wouldn't," he said with dignity; "but we are
badder--'specially you; you didn't mind mother three times to-day."

"I am not badder."

"I said I wouldn't quarrel, Doris; but you are--very much badder."

"Hush, children!" exclaimed Elizabeth, hurriedly intervening between the
militant pair. "Come right down stairs, and don't talk to each other at
all unless you can be pleasant and polite."

Miss Evelyn Tripp presently appeared in a wonderful toilet, all lace and
twinkling jets. She exclaimed over Carroll's marvellous gain in inches,
and Doris' brilliant colour, and kissed and cooed over Richard.

"They're certainly the dearest children in the world," she said. "I've
been simply wild to see them all these months, and you, too, Betty dear!
I've so much to tell you!"

She twined her arm caressingly about Doris, and smiled brilliantly down
at the little girl, who gazed with round appreciative eyes at the
visitor's gown and at the jewels which sparkled on her small white
hands.

"Both of my front teeth are all wiggly," whispered the child, feeling
that something out of the ordinary was demanded of her in a social way.
"I can wiggle them with my tongue."

"Can you, darling? How remarkable! Never mind; you'll soon have some
nice new ones that won't wiggle."

Doris giggled rapturously. "We're going to have ice-cream for dinner,"
was her next confidence. "But I'm not going to act s'prised when Celia
brings it in. We've all promised mother we won't, even if it's pink. I
hope it'll be pink; don't you?"

"Doris," warned her mother, "you're talking too much."

"Oh, do let the dear little soul say anything she likes to me, Betty!"
protested Miss Tripp. "If you knew how I enjoyed it!"

Doris nestled closer to the visitor, eyeing her mother with the
naughtily demure expression of a kitten stealing cream. "I was going to
tell you something funny," she said, "but I can't think what it was. I
guess I'll remember when we're eating dinner."

"The artless prattle of a child is so refreshing, you know," continued
Miss Tripp, "after all the empty conventionalities of society. I simply
love to hear the little darlings--especially yours, dear Betty. You are
bringing them up so beautifully!"

VIII

When Mr. George Hickey rang the bell at the door of the modest Brewster
residence that night, it was with the pleasant anticipation of a simple,
but well-cooked dinner, of the sort a bachelor, condemned by his
solitary estate to prolonged residence in that semi-public caravansary
known as the American boarding-house, seldom enjoys.

He was very far indeed from a knowledge of the fact that he was in the
oft-quoted position of the man in a boat on the hither side of the great
rapids of Niagara. Mr. Hickey had allowed himself to be drawn into
feeling a somewhat uncommon interest in Miss Evelyn Tripp, it is true;
but he attributed this feeling wholly to the fact that he had known Miss
Tripp when he was a tall, awkward boy of twenty and she was a rosy,
fascinating miss of sixteen. She had laughed at him slily in those days,
and he had resented her mirth with all the secret and hence futile
agony which marks the intercourse of the awkward youth with the
self-possessed maid. But the scar which Evelyn's youthful laughter had
left in his bosom had remained unwontedly tender--as an old wound
sometimes will; and when after the lapse of years they had met once more
Mr. Hickey found the lady so surprisingly sweet, so gentle, so
altogether tactful and sympathetic, that he could hardly escape a
pleasant and soothing sense of gratitude. They spoke of old times--very
old times they were; the mere mention of which brought a delicate blush
to Miss Tripp's cheek. And the auroral light of youth, which never
appears so roseate as when it shines upon the cold peaks of middle life,
irradiated their common past and appeared to linger fascinatingly over
Miss Tripp's somewhat faded person.

It had not, however, occurred to Mr. Hickey that the foregoing had any
bearing whatever upon his own immediate future, nor upon the immediate
future of Miss Evelyn Tripp. In a word, Mr. Hickey was very far from
contemplating matrimony when he entered the Brewster's cheerful little
parlour, bearing a box of bonbons for its mistress, and a jumping-jack
capable of singular and varied contortions, for the young Brewsters.

Miss Tripp appeared very much surprised to meet Mr. Hickey again; she
gave him a beautiful little hand of welcome from the deep chair where
she was enthroned with Richard upon her knee ruthlessly crumpling the
skirt of one of her carefully cherished gowns.

"I'm telling the children a fairy story," she said archly; "you mustn't
interrupt."

"May I listen, if I'm a good boy?" asked Mr. Hickey, endeavouring to
assume a light and festive society air, which hardly comported with his
tall spare figure and the air of sober professionalism which he had
acquired during a somewhat stern and strenuous past.

Carroll, who guarded Miss Tripp's chair on the right, exchanged puzzled
glances with Doris who occupied the left. The little girl giggled.

"You aren't a boy," she said, addressing Mr. Hickey with a confidence
inspired by past acquaintanceship; "you're all grown up."

"I like fairy stories, anyway," he asserted untruthfully; "and I want
to hear the one Miss Tripp is telling. You'll let me; won't you, Doris?"

"I'll let you, if Aunty Evelyn'll let you; but I guess she won't."

Miss Tripp laughed musically. "What a quaint little dear it is," she
murmured, kissing the child's pink cheek. "Why shouldn't Aunty Evelyn
let Mr. Hickey hear the story if he wants to, dear?"

"He's too old," said Doris convincingly. "He wouldn't care about
Cinderella losing off her glass slipper."

"Oh-e-e, Doris Brewster!" exclaimed Carroll, swelling with the superior
enlightenment of his three years of seniority. "That's very rude indeed!
Mr. Hickey doesn't look so very old. He's got quite a lot of hair left
on the sides of his head, and----"

"Thanks, my boy," interrupted Mr. Hickey hastily. "But don't entirely
floor me by enumerating all my youthful charms. How about that slipper
of Cinderella's, Miss Tripp; there's a prince in that story, isn't
there? with--er--plenty of hair on top of his head?"

Miss Tripp, who was actually blushing pink, quite in her old girlish
fashion, exchanged mirthful glances with the engineer.

"I was just coming to the prince," she said. "He was--oh, such a
beautiful prince, all dressed in pale blue, embroidered with pearls and
silver, and on his breast a great flashing diamond star. And when he saw
Cinderella, standing all by herself, in her beautiful gauzy
ball-dress----"

"An' her glass slippers!" gurgled Doris rapturously.

"An' her gwass sippers!" echoed Richard, hugging the story-teller in a
sudden spasm of affection.

"Yes, her glass slippers, of course, darlings," cooed Miss Tripp; "but
the prince did not notice the slippers, he was so agitated by the sight
of her lovely face and her shining golden hair."

Mr. Hickey caught himself gazing dreamily at Miss Tripp's elaborately
arranged coiffure. The yellow gas light fell becomingly upon the
abundant light brown waves and coils, touching them into a shimmering
gold which he did not remember to have noticed before. How well she was
telling the story, too; and how fond of her the Brewster children
appeared to be. He recalled mistily that someone had said, or
written--perhaps it was one of those old author chaps--that it was
impossible to deceive a child. Mr. Hickey was convinced that this must
be true. And insensibly he fell to thinking how pleasant it would be if
this were his own fire-side, and if the lady in the deep wicker chair
were----.

A sound of small hand-clapping brought him out of this blissful revery
with a start. "I like that part best of all," Carroll was saying; "an'
if I'd been that prince I'd 'av taken my big, shining sword and cut off
the heads of those bad, wicked sisters! Yes; I would; I'd like to do
it!" And the sanguinary small boy swaggered up and down, his shoulders
squared and his eyes shining.

"Oh, my dear!" protested Miss Tripp mildly. "You wouldn't be so unkind;
I'm sure you wouldn't."

"I'd take all their pretty dresses away an' wear 'em myself," shrilled
Doris excitedly. "An' I'd--pinch 'em; I'd----"

"Let me tell you what dear, sweet Cinderella did," interrupted Miss
Tripp, tactfully seizing the opportunity to impress a moral lesson.
"She forgave her unkind step-mother and her two rude, spiteful sisters,
and gave them each a castle and many, many lovely gowns and jewels; and
after that they loved Cinderella dearly--they couldn't help it. And all
of them were good and happy for ever afterward."

The children stared in round-eyed displeasures at this ethical but
entirely tame denouement.

"That isn't in my story-book," said Carroll positively. "Cinderella
married the Prince, an' the fairy god-mother turned the bad sisters into
rats, an' made 'em draw her carriage for ever an' ever."

"Why, Carroll Brewster! I guess you made that up!" cried Doris. "The
fairy god-mother didn't turn the bad sisters into anything; she jus'
waved her wand an' turned Cinderella's ol' ragged clo'es into a lovely
spangled weddin' dress, an' then----"

"She turned 'em into rats," repeated Carroll doggedly. "An' I'm glad she
did it."

"She did not turn 'em into rats!"

"She did!"

"She didn't!"

At this crucial moment entered Elizabeth, flushed and bright-eyed from
a final encounter with the elemental forces in the kitchen. "Won't you
all come out to dinner," she said prettily; "I'm sure you must have
concluded that dining was among the lost arts by this time."

"Not in this house," said Mr. Hickey gallantly. "This is one of the
few--the very few places where one has the inestimable privilege of
really dining. The balance of the time I merely take food from a strict
sense of duty."

"We're going to have ice-cream," whispered Carroll kindly.

His father, who had caught the whisper, laughed outright. "He wants to
give you something to look forward to, George," he said, as he tried the
edge of his carving-knife. "If variety is the spice of life anticipation
might be said to be its sweetening--eh? Will you have your beef rare or
well-done, Miss Tripp?"

"Well-done, if you please," murmured Miss Tripp, smiling happily as she
squeezed Doris' chubby hand under the table-cloth.

The little girl's eyes were very bright as she said, "I like to have
you a-visitin', Aunty Evelyn."

"Do you, dear? Well Aunty Evelyn is very, very happy to be here."

"We were going to have rice-pudding for dessert if you hadn't come. I
don't like rice-pudding; do you, Aunty Evelyn?"

"Doris--dear!"

Her mother's voice held reproof and warning; but the child with the
specious sense of security inspired by the presence of strangers
displayed her dimples demurely. "I didn't know it was naughty not to
like rice-pudding," she said, in a small distinct voice.

Mr. Hickey glanced thoughtfully across the table at Miss Tripp, who was
smiling down at the little girl encouragingly. "Most of us are naughty
when it comes to hankering after the unusual and the unattainable," he
observed didactically. "I eat my rice-pudding contentedly enough most
days of the year; but on the three hundred and sixty-fifth I----"

"You pine for pink ice-cream; don't you?" smiled Miss Tripp; "but one
might tire of even the pinkest ice-cream, if it appeared too often. What
one really wants is--plain bread." She cast a barely perceptible glance
at Elizabeth, the laces at her throat quivering with the ghost of a
sigh. The next instant she was laughing at Richard whose curly head was
beginning to droop heavily over his food.

"Poor little fellow," she murmured. "Do look, Elizabeth, he's almost
gone!"

"Won't you carry him up-stairs for me, Sam?" Elizabeth begged her
husband. "I ought not to have kept him up for dinner.--You'll excuse us
just an instant; won't you?"

It was a pretty picture; the tall, stalwart father lifting the child
rosy with sleep, and the little mother hovering anxiously near, like a
small brown bird. Mr. Hickey observed it solemnly; Miss Tripp smilingly;
then, for some reason unknown to both, their eyes met.

"--Er--let me pass you the--bread, Miss Tripp," said Mr. Hickey,
short-sightedly choosing among the viands immediately within his reach.

"Thank you, Mr. Hickey," said Evelyn, and again that faint, elusive sigh
shook the delicate laces at her throat.

IX

As Miss Tripp was putting the finishing touches to a careful toilet the
next morning she caught the sound of a whispered dispute in the hall;
then small knuckles were cautiously applied to the panel of her chamber
door.

"Aunty Evelyn! Aunty Evelyn! are you waked up?"

Miss Tripp had been brooding since daylight over the accumulated
problems which appeared to crowd her narrow horizon like so many
menacing thunder-caps; but she summoned a faint smile to her lips as she
opened the door.

"Why, good-morning, dears!" she cried cheerfully at sight of the two
small figures in their gay dressing-gowns and scarlet slippers.

"We want to hear a story, Aunty Evelyn," announced Doris, prancing
boldly in, each individual curl on her small head bobbing like coiled
wire. "We like stories."

"Come here, pet, and let Aunty brush your curls."

"No; I don't want my curls brushed; I want to hear a story about a
be-utiful princess going to seek her fortune."

Miss Tripp suppressed a vague sigh. "I know a poor, forlorn princess who
is obliged to go out all alone into the cold world to seek her fortune,"
she said. "And I'm very much afraid she won't find it."

"Is she young and be-utiful?" asked Doris, with wide-eyed attention.
"An' has she got a spangled dress?"

"Dot a spangled dwess?" cooed Richard, like a cheerful little echo.

"No; she's forced to wear a plain black dress in her wanderings, and she
isn't beautiful at all. She's not very young either, and ugly lines are
beginning to creep about her eyes and across her forehead; and one day,
not long ago she found--what do you suppose?"

"A bag of gold?"

"A bag o' dold?" echoed Richard.

"No, dear; this poor, forlorn little princess found three silver hairs
growing among the brown ones just over her ear."

Miss Tripp's sweet, drawling voice trembled slightly as she went on with
her little fable. "The princess felt so badly that she shed bitter
tears when she saw the glitter of those three silver hairs, because she
knew that she could never, never catch up with youth any more."

"What youth--the fairy prince?" Doris wanted to know.

And Richard smiled seraphically as he trilled, "Oh, dood! It was 'e
pwince!"

"No, darlings; there isn't any prince at all in this story. There was
one--once--away back in the beginning of it; but he--went away--to a far
country, and he--never came back."

"Did the princess cry?"

"Did her cwy?"

"Yes; she cried till all the brightness went out of her pretty eyes.
Then she stopped crying and laughed instead, because--Oh; because crying
didn't help a bit."

"You've been crying, Aunty Evelyn!" said Doris suddenly. "Why-e! your
eyes are all teary now!"

"I've got a cold; I'm afraid," prevaricated Miss Tripp.

"I don't like that story," objected Doris. "Unless----" and her eyes
brightened, "the prince came back. Let him come back, Aunty Evelyn;
please let him; it'll spoil the story if he doesn't."

Miss Tripp drew a deep breath. "I--wish he might come back," she said;
"but I--I'm afraid he never will, dear; and the poor little princess
will have to go on alone till----"

"Till what?" demanded Doris indignantly. "I c'n tell a better story 'an
that," she added.

"Tell it, dear."

"Well; the princess went out in her horrid ol' black clo'es an'
travelled an' travelled, _an' travelled_ till she was mos' tired out,
an' everywhere she went she asked 'where is my prince?' An' at first all
the people said, 'We don't know where any prince is.' But the princess
jus' made up her mind she _would_ find him; an'--an' bimeby she
did--jus' as easy! He was right there all the time; only he was
enchanted by an awful bad fairy so she couldn't see him, an' so----"

Doris paused to draw breath, and Richard gravely took up the tale,
nodding the while like a gay little china mandarin. "He was 'chanted an'
she was 'chanted, an' they bof was 'chanted, an'----"

"Be quiet, Buddy, an' let me tell," interrupted Doris. "She did find
him! Course she found him, an'--an' her horrid ol' clo'es was changed to
a lovely wedding dress, an'--an'--that's the end of it!"

Miss Tripp laughed. She felt unreasonably cheered by this optimistic
finale to her sad little story--which had no ending.

"That would be the beginning of a very cheerful story," she said. "Now
Aunty Evelyn must get some breakfast and start out into the cold world."

"Oh! we want you to stay!"

"I'm coming back, dears; yes, indeed; I'll be back this very evening,
and then I'll tell you the loveliest story in the world, all about a
little goose-girl."

It was a very cold world indeed into which Miss Tripp fared forth that
winter morning. But Elizabeth's friendly protests were vain.

"I really must go, dear," Evelyn told her with a firmness quite foreign
to her fashionable self. "You don't know--you can't guess how necessary
it is for me to find some way of earning money. Mother----" her voice
shook a little--"isn't at all well; she never was very strong, and our
losses have quite--Why, Elizabeth, you would hardly know mother; she's
so changed. She just sits by the window, and--looks out; I can't seem to
rouse her to--to do anything."

Remembering the frail, artificial old lady, with her elaborate toilets
and her perpetual aura of rice-powder and sachet, Elizabeth thought this
exceedingly probable. "Was it so very bad, Evelyn?" she asked
hesitatingly. "You know you only told me----"

"We lost nearly everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed
last fall," said Evelyn quietly. "I--couldn't seem to believe it at
first. Of course we were never rich; but we had always lived very
comfortably--you know how pleasant it was in our little apartment,
Elizabeth, with our good Marie to do everything for us, and all our
friends."

Miss Tripp touched her eyelids delicately with her little lace-edged
handkerchief. "I--mustn't cry," she said. "It makes one look so like a
fright, and I----. Elizabeth, do you suppose I could get a place
to--teach? I do love children so, and they always seem to like me."

"What would you teach?" Elizabeth asked, anxiously sympathetic, yet
knowing a little more of the ways of the educational world than did Miss
Tripp. "You know, Evelyn,--at least I am told--that nearly every teacher
has to be a specialist now. You might study kindergartening," she added
more hopefully.

Miss Tripp shook her head. "No; I couldn't do that. It would take too
long, and we should have plenty of time to--starve, I fancy, before----.
But what nonsense I'm talking! I must start out this minute; I have an
appointment at Whitcher's Teacher's Agency this morning. They told me
yesterday that a man--a school principal--was coming there to hire a
primary teacher. I'm sure I could do that; don't you think I could,
Elizabeth?--Just to teach the children how to read and write and do
little sums on their slates. I shall say I can anyway."

She waved her hand to her friend as she went bravely away down the snowy
street, and Elizabeth turned back to her children, feeling a new and
unfamiliar sense of gratitude for the warm home nest, with its three
turbulent birdlings.

It was Saturday, and the children could not be dispatched to
kindergarten as on other mornings of the week. It was also baking-day,
and bread and rolls were in slow process of rising to their appointed
size in the chilly kitchen. Elizabeth was frugally looking over the
contents of her larder with a view to a "picked-up" luncheon, when she
heard a small yet distinct knock on the back door.

She opened it upon Robbie Stanford, dancing with impatience on the snowy
step.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Brewster," he began with an ingratiating smile,
"I've come over to play with Carroll an' Doris. I c'n stay two hours 'n'
maybe three, 'nless my mother comes from down-town before that."

"Oh; isn't your mother at home?" asked Elizabeth, with a dubious glance
at the red-cheeked, black-eyed young person, who was already edging
smilingly toward the closed door of the dining-room. She had entertained
Master Stanford before in the absence of his parents and had learned to
dread the occasions of his visits.

"No, ma'am," said Robbie politely. "My mother's gone to have her teeth
fixed. The' was a teeny hole in one of 'em, an' the hole ached. Did you
ever have holes in your teeth, Mrs. Brewster?"

"Why, yes; I suppose I have," assented Elizabeth doubtfully. "Now,
Robbie; I want you to promise me that you will be a good boy this
morning, and not get into any mischief; I'm going to be very, very busy,
and----"

"I'll be good," responded the young person cheerfully. "I'll be gooder
'an anything. Where's Carroll?"

"He's in the other room; but--wait a minute, dear. You remember the last
time you played with Carroll you----"

"Yes, 'm; I 'member. We made an ocean in the bath-room, an' you
said----"

"Doris took a bad cold from getting so wet, and Richard almost had the
croup."

"I won't do it again," promised the visitor, digging his toes rather
shamefacedly under a loosened edge of the linoleum. "I'll jus' look at
pictures, 'n'--'n' things like that."

"Very well; I'll take you in where the children are playing. Carroll
will be glad to see you; I'm sure," she added, feeling that she had
been rather ungracious to her friend's child.

The three young Brewsters greeted their neighbour with a whoop of joy.
Master Stanford was blessed with a pleasantly inventive turn of mind,
and one could generally depend upon a break in the monotony of the home
circle when he appeared.

"What'll we do?" inquired Doris, prancing gaily around the visitor, who
gazed about him at the assembled Brewster toys with a somewhat ennuied
expression on his small, serious countenance.

"Aw--I don't know; play with dolls, I guess. I promised I'd be good."

"We might play Indian," suggested Carroll hopefully. "Mother lets us
take the couch-cover for a tent."

The visitor considered this proposition in Napoleonic silence. "Have
your dolls got real hair?" he inquired darkly of Doris.

"Uh-huh; every one of 'em 's got real hair. My new doll 'at I got
Christmas 's got lovely long curls. I don't play with her ev'ry day,
'cause mother's 'fraid I'll break her."

"Go an' get her; get all yer dolls."

"Oh--we don't want t' play with dolls," objected Carroll. "Let's build
a depot an' have trains a-smashin' int' each other."

"Nope; we'll play Indian," the visitor said firmly. "I'll show you how."

Under his able generalship the sitting-room was presently transformed
into the semblance of a rolling prairie, with a settler's wagon in the
midst of the landscape in which travelled Richard as husband and father,
driving a span of wicker chairs, while Doris, smothering a fine family
of long-haired dolls, sat behind.

Elizabeth who paused to glance in at this stage of the proceedings was
gratified by a sight of the four happy, earnest little faces, and the
apparent innocuousness of the proceedings.

"We're havin' lots of fun, mother; we're playin' wagon!" Doris
explained. "These are all my children; an' we're goin' west to live."

"Det-ap!" vociferated Richard, pulling manfully at the red lines
decorated with bells, with which he restrained his restive steeds.

"Whoa!" and he applied the gad with spirit. "Dey's doin' fast, mudzer,"
he shouted.

"That's a nice play!" chanted Elizabeth; "only be careful of the whip,
dear." Then she hurried up-stairs intent upon restoring immaculate order
to the upper part of her house before luncheon.

X

The better part of an hour had passed before she remembered the children
again; then a sound of terrific tumult from below gave wings to her
feet.

The scene which met her astonished eyes was one of blood and carnage.
The two boys, their faces horribly streaked with scarlet and yellow,
their hair stuck full of feathers, had evidently fallen upon the
peaceful settlers in their progress across the western plains, and were
engaged in plunder and rapine; Richard, bound hand and foot with his
scarlet lines, howled with abject terror, while Doris, wild-eyed and
furious, fought for the protection of her family of dolls.

"You shan't touch my best doll; you horrid boy!" she shrieked. "I'll
tell my--mother! I'll tell--my----"

"Give 'er here! I'm a big Injun an' I'm goin' to scalp every one of your
children!" yelled Robbie Stanford. "Here you, Carroll! what you doin'?
There's another kid a-hidin' under the chair--I mean the wagon! She'll
scalp easy!"

"Why, children! What are you doing? Carroll, Robert! Stop this instant!"

"We're playing Indian!" panted Carroll, pausing to eye his mother
disgustedly through his war-paint. "Doris oughtn't to have yelled so,
an' Buddy's nothin' but a bawl-baby. We didn't hurt him a single bit."

"Jus' see what they did to my dolls!" wailed Doris. "Tore the hair off
of ev'ry one of 'em!"

"Why, boys! I don't see what you were thinking of to spoil Doris' pretty
dolls!"

"We was only scalpin' her children," volunteered the instigator of the
crime, with a cheerful grin. "I c'n stick on the hair again, jus' as
easy as anythin', if you'll give me the glue. I scalped our baby's doll
an' my mother she stuck the hair on again with glue. 'Tain't hard to
stick it on; an' we only broke one. We wouldn't 'ave done that, if
Doris----"

"What is that stuff on your faces?" demanded Elizabeth sternly, as she
collected the parti-coloured scalps from among the débris on the floor.

"It's only war-paint, mother," explained Carroll. "Indians always put it
on their faces; don't you remember the Indians in my Indian book? We
made it out of jam an' egg. Celia gave it to us; we got the feathers out
the duster."

Elizabeth heaved a great sigh. "Come, and I'll wash your faces," she
said; "then I think perhaps Robbie had better----"

"No, ma'am;" said Master Stanford firmly; "it isn't two hours yet. I c'n
stay till the whistles blow, an' if you invite me I guess I c'n stay to
lunch."

"I'm not going to invite you," slipped off Elizabeth's exasperated
tongue. "I want you to go straight home, as soon as I've washed you and
made you look respectable."

The youngster's under lip trembled. Two big tears welled up in his black
eyes. "I--didn't--mean to--be--naughty!" he quavered. "I don't care if
you--whip--me; but I don't want--t' go home. Annie's--cross. She
slapped--me--twice this morning! She says I'm the plague o' her life."

Annie was the Stanford's cook and possessed of unlimited authority
which she frequently abused, Elizabeth knew. "Where is Livingstone?" she
asked in a milder voice, as she removed the traces of her best raspberry
jam from the visitor's round face.

"Mother took baby with her; she's going to leave him at gran'ma's house
till she comes home. She said I couldn't go, 'cause gran'ma--she's--kind
of nervous when I'm there."

"Well, dear; you can stay and have lunch with the children; only----"

"Are you goin' to whip me? I shan't cry if you do."

"My mother doesn't whip anybody," said Carroll superbly; "she's too kind
an' good!"

"So's my mother kind an' good! I double dare you to say she isn't!"

"Come, children; you mustn't get to quarrelling. Of course your dear
mother is kind and good, Robbie. And you ought to try to be so kind and
good and obedient that she won't ever feel that you ought to be
whipped."

Master Stanford's black eyes opened very wide at this difficult
proposition. "Aw--I don't know 'bout that," he said diffidently. "I
guess my mother'd jus' 's soon I'd be bad some o' the time. She says
she's glad I ain't a milk an' water child like Carroll. An' my papa, he
says----"

"You may both sit right down on this sofa," interrupted Elizabeth
hastily, "and look at these two books till I call you to luncheon. If
you get up once, Robbie, I shall be obliged to send you home to Annie."

"The idea of Marian saying such a thing about my Carroll," she thought
unforgivingly, as she set forth bananas and small sweet crackers for the
children's dessert. "A milk and water child, indeed; but of course, with
a boy like Robbie to deal with, she has to say something. I'm sorry for
those two children of hers."

Robbie Stanford stayed till his mother came after him at four o'clock,
and Elizabeth laying aside all other occupations supervised her small
kindergarten with all the tried patience and kindness of which she was
mistress.

Mrs. Stanford was voluble with apologies as she invested her son with
his coat and mittens. "I told Annie to have Robbie ask Carroll over for
luncheon," she said, "and I left the play-room all ready for them. I
assure you, Elizabeth, I had no notion of inflicting my child upon
you--when you have company, too; I'm really ashamed of Robbie."

"Yes, mother," interrupted that young person, "but Annie got mad jus'
'cause I made little round holes in one o' her ol' pies with my finger.
I only wanted to see the juice come out. 'N'--'n she slapped me, 'n'
tol' me to get out o' her way, or she'd pack her clo'es an' leave. So
I----"

Mrs. Stanford's pretty young face flushed with mortification. "I can see
that you are thinking me very careless to leave Robbie with a
bad-tempered servant," she said, "but Annie is usually so good with the
children, and I had to go. I had really neglected my teeth till one of
them ached."

"It was no trouble," dissembled Elizabeth mildly, "and really I should
much prefer to have Robbie here than to have Carroll at your house when
you are away. I should tremble for the results to your property. Of
course my Carroll alone is almost as innocuous as milk and water, but
with Robert to bring out his stronger qualities one can never safely
predict what will happen."

Mrs. Stanford looked up in sudden consternation, and meeting Elizabeth's
smiling glance she laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Well," she said,
"I'm glad, Betty, if you aren't actually worn out mothering my
black-eyed lamb. Another time I'll cope with all three of yours, if
you'll let me." Then she stooped and kissed Elizabeth in her usual
half-mocking way. "Thank you, little neighbour," she murmured; "you make
me ashamed of myself, whenever I see you. You are so much better than
I."

When Evelyn Tripp returned that afternoon in the gloom of the gathering
twilight she stood for a few minutes in the glow of Elizabeth's cheerful
fireside, slowly drawing off her gloves. She appeared pallid and worn in
the half light, and Elizabeth caught herself wondering if she had
lunched.

"Yes, dear," Miss Tripp informed her absent-mindedly; "I had a cup of
tea--I think it was tea--and a roll. I wasn't hungry after my interview
with the South Popham school principal."

"Oh, then you saw him? Did you--Was he----"

Evelyn laughed a little drearily. "No, dear," she sighed, shaking her
head; "nothing came of it. I suppose I ought not to have expected it.
Professor Meeker wanted someone with experience, and--and--a younger
person, he said. I didn't realise that I looked really old, Betty. I
thought----"

"You don't look old, Evelyn," denied Elizabeth warm-heartedly. "What was
the man thinking of?"

"Apparently of a red-cheeked, nursery-maid sort of a person who had
taught in the public schools. I saw him afterwards holding forth on the
needs of the Popham Institute to a young woman with a high pompadour and
wearing a red shirt-waist, a string of blue beads and a large glittering
watch-chain--the kind with a slide. I think she must have been what he
was looking for. Anyway the Whitcher people told me he had engaged her."

Elizabeth gazed at her friend, a sort of aching sympathy withholding her
from speech.

"After that," pursued Miss Tripp, "I went to another agency, and they
asked me if I would like to travel abroad with a lady and her two
daughters. I thought I should like it very much indeed--I could engage
Cousin Sophia to stay with mother, you know--so I took the car out to
Chelsea to see a Mrs. Potwin-Pilcher, and found what she was looking for
was really an experienced lady's-maid and courier rolled into one, and
that she expected 'willing services in exchange for expenses.' I told
her I couldn't think of such a thing. Then Mrs. Potwin-Pilcher rose
up--she was a big, raw-boned person glittering with diamonds--and
informed me that she had fifty-nine applications for the position--I was
the sixtieth, it seems--and that she was sure I would be unable to
perform the duties of the position. After that I came directly home.
Monday I shall----"

Miss Tripp paused apparently to remove her veil; when she finished her
sentence it was in a steady, matter-of-fact voice. "I shall go to see an
old friend of mother's--a Mrs. Baxter Crownenshield--I think you've
heard me speak of her, Elizabeth. She and mother were very intimate once
upon a time, and Mr. Crownenshield owed his success in business to my
father. I'm going to--ask her advice. Now I think I'll go up-stairs and
take off these damp skirts, and after that I'll come down and help you
mend stockings, or anything----. Only let me do something, Elizabeth!"

There was almost a wail in the tired voice, and Elizabeth, wiser than
she knew, pulled out her mending-basket with a smile. "I'm almost
ashamed to confess that I need some help badly," she said. "I hope you
won't be horrified at the condition of Carroll's stockings."

Miss Tripp was quite her charming self again when she reappeared clad in
a trailing gown of rosy lavender. She told the children the lively tale
of the goose-girl, which she had promised them in the morning, choosing
the while the stockings with the most discouraging holes out of
Elizabeth's basket and protesting that she loved--yes, positively
adored--darning stockings. But she finished her self-imposed task at an
early hour, and after playing two or three tuneful little chansonettes
on Elizabeth's hard-worked and rather shabby piano, excused herself.

"I must write to mother," she said smilingly. "She quite depends on me
for a bright chatty letter every day, and I've so much to tell her of
to-day's amusing adventures. Really, do you know that Potwin-Pilcher
person ought to go into a novel. She was positively unique!"

Elizabeth was silent for some moments after the sound of Evelyn's light
foot had passed from the stair. Then she turned a brooding face upon her
husband. "I am so sorry for poor Evelyn," she said.

Sam Brewster stirred uneasily in his chair. "So you said before she
arrived," he observed. "I don't see anything about the fair Evelyn to
call forth expressions of pity. She looks remarkably prosperous to me."

"Yes; but you don't see everything, Sam. That gown is one she has had
for years, and it has been cleaned and made over and over again."

"Well; so have most of yours, my dear, and you don't ask for sympathy on
that account."

"Sam, dear, they haven't any money. Can't you understand? They lost
everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed. Evelyn doesn't
know what to do. There is her mother to take care of and you know how
helpless she is. I don't suppose she ever really did anything in her
whole life."

"It's a problem; I'll admit," agreed her husband, scowling over his
unread paper; "but I don't see what we are going to do about it."

"That's the worst of it, Sam; we really can't do anything, and I'm
afraid other people won't. I had thought--if nothing else turned
up--that perhaps Mrs. Tripp could be induced to go into a home. One of
those nice, refined places where one has to pay to be admitted, and then
Evelyn--might----"

She paused and looked anxiously at her husband. "We might let her stay
here, Sam; and----"

He shook his head. "You're the most self-sacrificing of darlings when it
comes to helping your friends," he said; "but I couldn't stand for that,
Betty. Two weeks is about my limit, I'm afraid, when it comes to
entertaining angels unawares. I'm willing to admit the unique character
of Miss Tripp, and to vote her a most agreeable guest, and all that.
But----"

Elizabeth gazed at her husband understandingly. "I know, Sam," she said,
"and I think so too. But----"

XI

"Mother, de-ar, can we go out to play in the back yard? I c'n put on my
overshoes an' leggins, an' I c'n help Doris too, if you're busy."

Elizabeth looked up from her task of cutting out rompers for her baby
with a preoccupied sigh. "You have a little cold now, Carroll," she said
doubtfully, "and if you should get wet in the snow----"

"We won't get wet, mother. I pr-romise!"

"Very well, dear; now remember!"

It was cold and clear and there seemed very little danger of dampness as
the two children ran out with a whoop of joy into the side yard where
the snow-laden evergreens partially screened the Stanford's house from
view. Robbie Stanford's round, solemn face was staring at them wistfully
from a second-story window as they dashed ecstatically into a snow bank,
to emerge white with the sparkling drift.

"Hello, Rob; come on out!" called Carroll.

"I can't," replied Master Stanford, raising the window cautiously.

"Why?"

"Oh, nothin' much; but I guess I'd better stay up here till mother comes
home."

"Who said so?"

"That horrid ol' Annie. I was down in the kitchen an' I fired only one
clothespin at her, jus' for fun, an' it hit her in the eye; she got mad
an' chased me up here an' locked the door."

"Where's your mother?"

"She's gone down town. She said she'd bring me some candy if I was good.
Bu' 'f I ain't good she'll take the paddle to me. Say, Carroll!"

"What?"

"Why don't you an' Doris make a skatin' rink?"

"A--what?"

"A skatin' rink. It's great. I know how; I saw a boy makin' one in his
back yard. It's awful easy. You just run the hose----"

Master Stanford paused in the course of his exposition to cast a
cautious glance behind him. "I guess I'm takin' cold all right," he went
on feelingly. "I hope I am. Then maybe I'll have the croup an' be awful
sick. I guess they'd all be sorry, then. Say, Carroll, do you see Annie
anywheres?"

Carroll reconnoitred cautiously. "She's hangin' up clo'es in the back
yard," he informed the young person aloft.

"If I c'd get out of here, I'd show you how to make that skatin' rink.
We c'd make it easy, an' have it ready to skate on b' to-morrow."

"We haven't any skates," objected Doris. "B'sides," with a toss of her
scarlet hood, "I don't believe you know how to make a skatin' rink."

"I don't know how? Well, I just bet I do!" exclaimed the prisoner
dangling his small person far over the window-sill, while Doris screamed
an excited protest. "Pooh! I ain't afraid of fallin' out--ain't afraid
of nothin'; I'll bet I c'd jump out this window. I guess I'd have to if
the house took on fire. Say, if this house should ketch on fire,
Carroll, your house would burn up too. I've got some matches in my
pocket," he added darkly; "if I should take a notion I c'd burn up
everythin' on this block, an' maybe the whole town. I'll bet I c'd do
it."

"How do you make a skatin' rink?" inquired Carroll, with an anxious
glance at his own cosy home, which suddenly appeared very dear to him in
view of a general conflagration.

Master Stanford reflected frowningly. "Is our cellar window open?"

"Nope; it's shut."

"Well, first you'll have to dig out a big square place, an' pile snow
all round the edge. I'll get out o' here somehow b' the time you get
that done; then we'll run it full of water. 'N after that it'll freeze."

"Where c'd we get the water?" inquired Doris, with an unbelieving sniff.
"Mother wouldn't let us get it in the kitchen."

"Out of our hose pipe," said Master Stanford grandly. The Brewsters
owned no hose, and this fact was a perpetual source of grievance in
summer time. "I'll run her right under the hedge into your yard,"
continued the proprietor of the hose generously, "an' let her swizzle!"

"Oh--my!" gasped the small Brewsters in excited chorus.

"Well; are you goin' to do it?"

Carroll shook his head. "We promised mother we wouldn't get wet," he
observed with an air of superior virtue. "'N we always mind our mother,
don't we, Doris?--at least I do. Doris doesn't always. But she's a
girl."

Master Stanford cackled with derision. "Aw--you're a terrible good boy,
aren't you?" he crowed. "My father says you're a reg'lar prig. He says
he'd larrup me, if I was always braggin' 'bout bein' so good the way you
do. He says I haven't anythin' to brag of. Course if you're 'fraid of
your mother----"

Doris pirouetted off across the yard with a flirt of her short skirts.
"We aren't afraid, smarty!" she cried, her pink chin high in air. "An'
we aren't any gooder an' you are, Robbie Stanford--at least I'm not; so
there! Come on, Carroll; let's make a skatin' rink."

Hard labour with two small snow-shovels produced the semblance of a
square enclosure bounded by uneven ridges of soft snow. Mrs. Brewster
glancing out of the window at her darlings was pleased to observe their
red cheeks and the joyous enthusiasm with which they were pursuing their
self-imposed task.

"Dear little souls!" she thought, "how little it takes to keep them
happy." Then she became absorbingly busy at her machine in the task of
double-stitching the seams of the baby's rompers.

In the meanwhile young Robert Stanford had been released from durance
vile by the kind-hearted Annie, whose warm Irish heart had reproached
her for her fit of bad temper.

"Sure an' yez didn't mean to hit me eye; did yez, now?" she inquired, as
she poked her broad red face into the room.

"Naw; course I didn't," the incarcerated one ingratiatingly assured her.
"Say, Annie, c'n I have four cookies?"

"Oh, go 'way wid yez; four's too many entirely; I'll give ye wan wid a
clip over yer ear."

"No; honest, I ain't goin' to eat 'em all. I want one for Carroll an'
Doris an' two for me."

"An' it's the generous young one he is entirely," laughed Annie. "Come
on down an' I'll put yer coat on, and mind yez don't get into no more
mischief or I'll be afther tellin' yer mother; thin you'll get a taste
of the paddle."

"I'll give you a whole lot of my candy, Annie," said the boy earnestly,
"if you'll tell mother I was awful good. Will you?"

"'Awful' it was, all right," giggled Annie; "but if I was to say you was
good I'd have to burn in purgatory for me sins. I'll say nothin'."

"Where's purgatory, Annie?" inquired the young person after a thoughtful
silence.

"It's a warrum place entirely where you'll find yourself some day, I'm
thinkin', if yez meddle too much in my kitchen," said Annie darkly.
"Here's your cookies; now g'wan wid yez an' don't ye be afther botherin'
me no more."

It was a matter which required concerted effort to uncoil the heavy
hose, attach it to the water pipe and lift the nozzle to the level of
the window; but it was accomplished at last through the united efforts
of the two boys ably assisted by Doris, who was all excitement at the
prospect of sliding on a real ice pond in her own yard.

"I guess our daddy'll be s'prised when he sees us goin' around like
lightnin' on reg'lar ice," she said. "He's got skates, our daddy has,
an' he c'n skate like everythin', our daddy can."

"Pooh! that's nothin'," retorted Master Stanford; "my father c'n beat
your father all holler. He's a whole lot taller 'n your father, an' our
house is higher 'n yours, too."

"It's p'liter not to brag," said Doris, ignoring her own deflections
from civility. "Oh, my, look at the water spurting out of that teeny,
weeny hole! It's just like a fountain."

The two boys were laboriously dragging the heavy hose across the yard,
and in the process other holes appeared through which the water hissed
and gurgled with increasing force.

"I don't care," the proprietor of the hose assured them loftily. "It's
an' ol' thing anyway. We're goin' to have a great long new one nex'
summer; then maybe we'll give you this one. My father's so rich he don't
care. Now I'll poke the nozzle through the hedge an' let her swizzle.
Get out o' the way, Doris; I don't care if I do get wet."

Ten minutes later Mrs. Stanford, rosy and cheerful, after her brisk walk
in the winter sunshine, appeared on the scene. "What are you doing,
kiddies?" she inquired pleasantly; then in a more doubtful tone. "What
_are_ you doing? Why, Robbie!"

"We're jus' makin' a skatin' rink, and the ol' hose leaks like thunder,"
explained her son, employing a simile he had heard his father use the
day before, and which he had considered particularly manly and
admirable.

"Robert! you are soaked to the skin--and so is Carroll. Go right into
the house. What do you mean by being so naughty?"

"You didn't say I couldn't take the hose," sulked the boy, surveying his
parent from under lowering brows.

"Go in the house, sir; I'll attend to you presently," said his mother
sternly.

"Oh, please; I'll be good! I didn't--mean--to," whined the child.
"Carroll an' Doris, they wanted a skatin' rink, an' I----"

Mrs. Stanford stooped to turn off the water. "Go home at once," she said
to her neighbour's children. "And you, Robert, go up to the bathroom and
take off your wet clothing." Her pretty young face was flushed with
anger. "I never saw such dreadful children!" she murmured wrathfully.

"My, but she's mad!" whispered Carroll, looking after the slim, erect
figure, "it wasn't our fault their ol' hose leaked."

"I guess our mother'll be some mad, too," said Doris doubtfully; "that
water spurted all over my leggins; an' now I guess it's freezing."

The two walked slowly across the yard, ploughing through the rapidly
congealing slush, which was the disappointing outcome of two hours of
hard work.

"I don't like Robbie Stanford one bit," said Doris disgustedly. "He's
always getting us into mischief."

"I said we ought not to get wet," Carroll reminded her eagerly. "Don't
you remember I did? An' you said----"

"I don't like you either," pursued the little girl stonily. "I don't
b'lieve I like boys _a'tall_; so there!"

"I'm all wet," she announced to her mother, "an' Carroll's wetter 'an I
am; an'--we--we're--both--c-cold!"

It was characteristic of Elizabeth that she thoroughly dried and warmed
the children before asking any questions. Then despite their dismayed
protests she put them both to bed. "You disobeyed me," she told them,
"and now you'll have to stay in your beds till to-morrow morning. I'll
explain to your father. Of course he'll be disappointed not to see you
at dinner; but I can't help that."

A period of depressing silence followed during which both children
caught the distant sounds of passionate and prolonged crying from the
neighbouring house.

"It's Robbie," said Carroll in an awed whisper; "his mother's whipping
him with that butter-paddle o' hers. She does that when he's awful bad."

"I'd bite her!" murmured Doris between her clenched teeth.
"I'd--I'd--scratch her!" She burst into excited tears. "I'd just--hate
my mother if she--if she hurt me like that!"

"Pooh! Rob don't care so very much," Carroll assured her; "he says he
hollers jus' as loud as he can so his mother'll stop quicker. I s'pose,"
he continued after a thoughtful pause, "Robbie'll be up to dinner jus'
the same, an' we'll be here eatin' bread and milk."

XII

Elizabeth's promised explanation to the father of the culprits above
stairs led to a spirited discussion between the husband and wife, after
Miss Tripp had retired to her apartment.

"Poor little kids," Sam Brewster said whimsically. "I believe I'm glad
I'm not your child, Betty,--I mean, of course, that I'm glad I'm your
husband," he amended quickly, as her unsmiling eyes reproached him.
"Don't you think you were a little hard on them, though?"

"Hard on them?" she echoed indignantly. "You're much more severe with
the children than I am, Sam,--when you're at home. You know you are."

He smoked thoughtfully for a minute or two before replying. "Look here,
Betty," he said at last, "you're right in a way. I'm not half so patient
as you are, I'll admit. But I wonder if we don't all miss the mark when
it comes to disciplining children?--Wait--just a minute before you
answer. I've been thinking a whole lot about this business of home rule
since we--er--discussed it the other day, and I've come to the
conclusion that the only thing to do is to let universal law take its
course with them. They are human beings, my dear, and they've got to
come up against the law in its broader sense sooner or later. Let 'em
begin right now."

She was eyeing him pityingly. "And by that you mean----?"

"I mean," he went on, warming to his subject, "that you've got to teach
a child what it means to reap what he sows. If Richard wants to put his
finger on the stove and investigate the phenomenon of calorics, let him.
He won't do it twice."

"And if he wants to paddle in the aquarium of a cold winter day,
you'd----"

"Let him--of course," said Sam stoutly. "He'd feel uncomfortably damp
and chilly after a while."

"Yes; and have the croup or pneumonia that same night."

"You're hopelessly old-fashioned, Betty," he laughed; "you shouldn't
introduce the croup or pneumonia idea into the infant consciousness.
But seriously, my dear, I believe I'm right. If you don't teach the
children to recognise the relation between cause and effect now--so that
it becomes second nature to them, how are they going to understand the
subject when they're put up against it later? You'll find the mother
bird and the mother bear, and, in fact, all the animal creation
carefully instilling the idea of cause and effect into their offspring
from the very beginning; while human parents are as constantly
protecting their children from the effects of the causes which the
children ignorantly set in motion. In other words we persist in undoing
the work of old 'Mother Be-done-by-as-you-did.' It's a blunder, in my
opinion. But of course, I'm a mere man and my ideas are not entitled to
much consideration."

Elizabeth gazed at her husband with open admiration. "Of course they are
entitled to consideration," she said decidedly. "And I believe what you
have said--with reservations. Suppose Baby Dick, for example, should
lean out of the window too far--a second-story window, I mean--and I
should see him doing it and feel pretty certain he was going to pitch
out head first and cripple himself for life. Do you think I ought to
stand still and let the law of gravitation teach him not to do it a
second time?"

Sam Brewster laid down his pipe and gazed steadfastly at his wife. She
was looking extremely young and bewitchingly pretty as she leaned toward
him, her cheeks pink, her brown eyes glowing with earnestness in which
he thought he detected a spark of her old girlish mischief.

"'And still the wonder grew,'" he quoted solemnly, "'that one small head
could carry all she knew!'"

"Please answer me, Sam," she insisted.

"Well, of course you've got me. You'd have to haul in the young person
by the heels, and----"

"And what, exactly, if you please?"

"You might illustrate--with some fragile, concrete object, like an
egg--as to what would happen if he fell out," said Sam, with exceeding
mildness, "and----"

"In other words," she interrupted him triumphantly, "I ought to
interfere _some_ of the time between cause and effect. The question
being when to interfere and when not to."

"Exactly!" he said, planting an irrelevant kiss on the pink cheek
nearest him. "And that, my dear Betty, is your job--and, of course,
mine, when I'm here. But I still hold that the natural penalty is
best--when it's convincingly painful yet entirely innocuous."

"What is the natural penalty for eating cookies out of the box when
you've been forbidden to do it?" she wanted to know.

He chuckled as certain memories of his boyhood came back to him. "My
word!" he said, "I wish I could ever taste anything half as good as the
cookies out of Aunt Julia Brewster's crock--it was a cooky-crock in
those days. Of course I was forbidden to go to it without permission,
and also of course I did it."

"What happened?" she demanded, the mischief growing bolder in her eyes.

He reflected. "Aunt Julia wouldn't let me have any at table on several
occasions; but I--er--regret to say that I was not duly impressed by the
punishment. A cooky--one cooky--decorously taken from a china plate at
the conclusion of a meal did not, in my youthful opinion, court
comparison with six--eight--ten cookies, moist and spicy from their
seclusion and eaten with an uncloyed appetite. Let's--er--change the
subject for the moment, my dear. Of course I'm right, but I appear to be
hopelessly treed. Tell me how our friend Miss Tripp is getting on. She
appeared somewhat depressed at dinner-time, and I didn't like to ask for
information for fear there was nothing doing."

Elizabeth sighed sympathetically. "Evelyn had a dreadfully disappointing
day," she told him. "But"--her eyes dancing again--"she met Mr. Hickey
down town, and he actually invited her to lunch with him."

Sam whistled softly. "Hickey is progressing," he said approvingly. "Did
he take her to the business men's lunchroom? Hickey has conscientious
scruples against going anywhere else. I asked him into Colby's one day
and he declined on the ground of his duty as a constant patron of the B.
M. L. He said his table was reserved for him there by the season,
and----"

"How absurd!" laughed Elizabeth. "But, I was going to tell you; Evelyn
remembered another engagement, and so----" she stopped short, her eyes
growing luminous. "Sam," she said suddenly, "I don't know what to think
of Evelyn; she really didn't have any lunch at all; she said so when she
came. I made her a cup of tea; she looked so worn and tired. I wonder if
Mr. Hickey could have said anything, or---- What do you think, Sam?"

Sam yawned behind his paper. "I'm really too sleepy to give to the
question the profound attention which it merits; but to-morrow when my
intellect is fresh and keen, I'll endeavour to----"

"You mean you don't care."

"Suppose I did care, my very dear Betty; suppose my whole career
depended upon what Hickey said--or didn't say; what could I do about
it?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Sam," said his Elizabeth meekly. But her eyes
were still full of speculative curiosity as she went up-stairs.

XIII

The facts in the case, if known to Elizabeth, might have served to throw
a clearer light upon Miss Tripp's somewhat unsatisfactory account of her
day in the city. In the first place, the weather which had dawned bright
and sunny had suddenly turned nasty, with a keen wind driving large,
moist snowflakes into the faces of pedestrians. Evelyn had found herself
without an umbrella and wearing her best hat and gown walking the long
block which intervened between her destination and the car from which
she had alighted.

Mrs. Baxter Crownenshield was known to the wide circle of her
acquaintances as a large, funereal person, invariably clothed in black,
and as perpetually exuding a copious and turgid sympathy upon all who
came in contact with her, somewhat after the manner of a cuttle-fish.
She lived in a mansion, large and dull like herself, on Beacon Street,
where she occupied herself exclusively with those dubious activities
euphemistically called "charitable work."

When Miss Evelyn Tripp was shown into Mrs. Crownenshield's chilly
reception-room that morning in February, she shivered a little in her