you children! Go and let out the hens, and give them some water!"

Arnold needed no second bidding, reminded by his stepmother's words
of his experiences of the morning. He and Judith scampered away in
a suddenly improvised race to see who would reach the chicken-house
first. Sylvia went more slowly, looking back once or twice at the
picture made by the two women, so dramatically contrasted--her mother,
active, very upright, wrapped in a crumpled and stained apron, her
dark hair bound closely about her round head, her moist, red face and
steady eyes turned attentively upon the radiant creature beside her,
cool and detached, leaning willow-like on the slender wand of the
gold-colored parasol.

Professor Marshall chanced to be late that day in coming home for
luncheon, and Aunt Victoria and Arnold had returned to the hotel
without seeing him. His wife remarked that Victoria had asked her
to tell him something, but, acting on her inviolable principle that
nothing must interfere with the cheerful peace of mealtime, said
nothing more to him until after they had finished the big plate of
purple grapes from her garden, with which the meal ended.

Then Judith vanished out to the shop, where she was constructing a
rabbit-house for the latest family. Sylvia took Lawrence, yawning and
rubbing his eyes, but fighting desperately against his sleepiness,
upstairs for his nap. When this task fell to Judith's lot it was
despatched with business-like promptness, but Lawrence had early
discovered a temperamental difference between his two sisters, and
Sylvia was seldom allowed to leave the small bed until she had paid
tribute to her ever-present desire to please, in the shape of a story
or a song. On that day Buddy was more exacting than usual. Sylvia told