his hands full.

Old Daphne, the cook, never could find it in her heart to refuse "Marse
Sydney's" boys anything. They were too much like what their father had
been at their age to resist their playful coaxing. She had nursed him
when he was a baby, and had been his loyal champion all through his
boyhood. Now her black face wrinkled into smiles whenever she heard his
name spoken. In her eyes, nobody was quite so near perfection as he,
except, perhaps, the fair woman whom he had married.

"Kain't nobody in ten States hole a can'le to my Marse Sidney an' his
Miss Elise," old Daphne used to say, proudly. "They sut'n'ly is the
handsomest couple evah jined togethah, an' the free-handedest. In all
they travels by sea or by land they nevah fo'gits ole Daphne. I've got
things from every country undah the shinin' sun what they done
brung me."

Now, all the services she had once been proud to render them were
willingly given to their little sons. When Keith came in with a pitiful
tale of a tramp who was starving at their very gates, she gave him even
more than he asked for, and almost more than he could carry.

The bear and its masters were so hungry, and their two little hosts so
interested in watching them eat, that they forgot all about going back
to meet the train. They did not even hear it whistle when it came
puffing into the Valley.

As Miss Allison stepped from the car to the station platform, she looked
around in vain for the boys who had promised to meet her. Her arms were
so full of bundles, as suburban passengers' usually are, that she could
not hold up her long broadcloth skirt, or even turn her handsome fur
collar higher over her ears. With a shade of annoyance on her pretty
face, she swept across the platform and into the waiting-room, out
of the cold.

Behind her came a little girl about ten years old, as unlike her as
possible, although it was Virginia Dudley's ambition to be exactly like
her Aunt Allison. She wanted to be tall, and slender, and grown up; Miss
Allison was that, and yet she had kept all her lively girlish ways, and
a love of fun that made her charming to everybody, young and old.
Virginia longed for wavy brown hair and white hands, and especially for
a graceful, easy manner. Her hair was short and black, and her
complexion like a gypsy's. She had hard, brown little fists, sharp gray
eyes that seemed to see everything at once, and a tongue that was always
getting her into trouble. As for th