by saying,--

"Well done, Rosie! If only Harry could hear you!"

"I have often wished that Hilda could see and hear you both over this
little mortal. You should see Hilda. Does not she preserve her
equanimity? Fancy her walking the room for hours with any of her boys,
as you did the other night with this one. Not she, indeed, nor any one
else, with her permission."

"I thought--I am sure you have always spoken about Hilda as a model
mother," said Fanny, doubtfully.

"And a fond mother," said Graeme.

"She _is_ a model mother; she is fond, but she is wise," said Rose,
nodding her head. "I say no more."

"Fanny dear, we shall have to learn of Rose. We are very inexperienced
people, I fear," said Graeme, smiling.

"Well, I daresay even I might teach you something. But you should see
Hilda and her babies. Her eldest son is three years old, and her second
will soon be two, and her daughter is four months. Suppose she had
begun by walking all night with each of them, and by humouring every
whim?"

And then Rose began her talk with the baby again, saying all sorts of
things about the fond foolishness of his little mamma and his Aunt
Graeme, that it would not have been at all pretty, she acknowledged, to
say to themselves. Graeme listened, smiling, but Fanny looked anxious.

"Rose," said she, "tell me about Hilda's way. I want to have the very
best way with baby. I know I am not very wise, but I do wish to learn
and to do right!"

Her words and her manner reminded Rose so forcibly, by contrast, of the
Fanny whose vanity and self-assertion had been such a vexation so often,
that, in thinking of those old times, she forgot to answer her, and sat
playing with the child's clasping fingers.

"She thinks I will never be like Hilda," said Fanny, dolefully, to
Graeme.

Rose shook her head.

"There are not many like Hilda; but I don't see any reason why you
should not be as good a mother as she is, and have as obedient children.
You have as good a teacher. No, don't look at Graeme. I know what you
mean. She has taught you all the good that is in you. There are more
of us who could say the same--except for making her vain. It is this
young gentleman, I mean, who is to teach you."

And she began her extraordinary confidences to the child, till Graeme
and Fanny were both laughing heartily at her nonsense.

"I'll tell you what, Fanny," said she, looking up in a little. "It is
the mother-love that makes