with expressions of mutual esteem in spite of their
difference of accent and fortune. Mrs. Forsyth asked if she might not
kiss Peter, and did so; he ran to his mother and whispered to her;
then he ran back and gave Tata so great a hug that she fell over from
it.

Tata did not cry, but continued as if lost in thought which she could
not break from, and that night, after she had said her prayers with
her mother, her mother thought it was time to ask her: "Tata, dear,
why did you act so to that boy to-day? Why didn't you give him
something of yours when he brought you all his things? Why did you act
so oddly?"

Tata said something in a voice so low that her mother could not make
it out.

"What did you say?"

"I couldn't tell which," the child still whispered; but now her
mother's ear was at her lips.

"How, which?"

"To give him. The more I looked," and the whisper became a quivering
breath, "the more I couldn't tell which. And I wanted to give them
_all_ to him, but I couldn't tell whether it would be right, because
you and papa gave them to me for birthday and Christmas," and the
quivering breath broke into a sobbing grief, so that the mother had to
catch the child up to her heart.

"Dear little tender conscience!" she said, still wiping her eyes when
she told the child's father, and they fell into a sweet, serious talk
about her before they slept. "And I was ashamed of her before that
woman! I know she misjudged her; but _we_ ought to have remembered how
fine and precious she is, and _known_ how she must have suffered,
trying to decide."

"Yes, conscience," the father said. "And temperament, the temperament
to which decision is martyrdom."

"And she will always have to be deciding! She'll have to decide for
you, some day, as I do now; you are very undecided, Ambrose--she gets
it from you."

II

The Forsyths were afraid that Tata might want to offer Peter some gift
in reparation the next morning, and her father was quite ready, if she
said so, to put off their leaving town, and go with her to the
Constitutional Storage, which was the only address of Mrs. Bream that
he knew. But the child had either forgotten or she was contented with
her mother's comforting, and no longer felt remorse.

One does not store the least of one's personal or household gear
without giving a hostage to storage, a pledge of allegiance impossible
to break. No matter how few things one puts in,