that slowly, but quite surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough
looked quite the same as it did before you touched it. Unless, of
course, your hand was extra dirty, in which case, naturally, there
would be a little black mark.

Well, it was just like that with the sorrow the children had felt at
Father's going away, and at Mother's being so unhappy. It made a
deep impression, but the impression did not last long.

They soon got used to being without Father, though they did not
forget him; and they got used to not going to school, and to seeing
very little of Mother, who was now almost all day shut up in her
upstairs room writing, writing, writing. She used to come down at
tea-time and read aloud the stories she had written. They were
lovely stories.

The rocks and hills and valleys and trees, the canal, and above all,
the railway, were so new and so perfectly pleasing that the
remembrance of the old life in the villa grew to seem almost like a
dream.

Mother had told them more than once that they were 'quite poor now,'
but this did not seem to be anything but a way of speaking. Grown-
up people, even Mothers, often make remarks that don't seem to mean
anything in particular, just for the sake of saying something,
seemingly. There was always enough to eat, and they wore the same
kind of nice clothes they had always worn.

But in June came three wet days; the rain came down, straight as
lances, and it was very, very cold. Nobody could go out, and