eorge has been doing. You'll
never guess what it is!"

"Is that so?" said Langshaw absently in his turn. He had a momentary
sense of being set back in his impulse to confidences that was not,
after all, untinged with pleasure. His delightful secret was still his
own, unmarred by unresponsive criticism. "By the way, Clytie, I don't
like the way George has been behaving lately. He hasn't shown me his
report from school in months; whenever I ask him for it he has some
excuse. Hello! Is that little Mary crying?"

"I wonder what on earth has happened now!" exclaimed the mother, rushing
from the room, to return the next instant, pulling after her a
red-cloaked and red-hatted little girl who sought to hide behind her.

"Well, what do you think she's done?" Clytie's tone was withering as she
haled forth the shrinking culprit, her small hands over her eyes. "She
lost her purse with the dollar she had saved up for your Christmas
present--lost the money for dear father's present; and all because she
took it with her to buy a five-cent pencil--a green pencil with purple
glass in the end of it; to buy something for _herself_ before
Christmas!" Clytie paused tragically. "Of course, if she hadn't taken
her money out to spend it on herself she wouldn't have lost it!"

"I don't care!" burst out the culprit, her big dark eyes, just like her
mother's, flashing from under her brown curls, and her red lips set
defiantly. "It was my own money, anyhow, if I did lose it. I earned it
all myself. It wasn't yours!"

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" interposed the father in gentle reproof. "Little girls
mustn't talk like that to dear mother. Come, get up here on father's
knee--so." He took off the red cap, tucked the brown curly head in the
bend of his arm, his chin resting on the top of it as he went on, with
the child's small hands clutching at his. "Mary must always do what
mother says; but, so far as this money is concerned, you can make me
something that I would like far better than anything you could buy. Why
don't you make me another pincushion, for instance? The one you gave me
last year is quite worn out."

"A pink one?" asked Mary faintly.

"Yes. What's the matter now?" The child had suddenly wriggled to a
kneeling posture in his hold and had her little strangling arms round
his neck in a tempest of sobs.

"I don't want to give you a pi-ink pincushion--I don't want to! I want
my dollar! I want my dollar--to spend! I want--Father, I want my
dollar