he music at all
costs, the little fat girl's in particular, came up to me, and said in
an aggrieved voice, "Miss Daly has spoilt my program; she can't write,
and she has written big D's all over it. Will you write me out a fresh
one?"

Which I, of course, did. Really it was very careless of Miss Daly.

The children danced hard, with intervals for tea and refreshment; and
as seven o'clock struck, there was a transformation scene. With
conscientious punctuality the party-dressed children turned, into little
or big woolen bundles, as the case might be. The last bundle I saw was a
pink woolen one, weeping bitterly. My heart was wrung. The noisy crying
of a child is bad enough, but when it is the soft weeping of a broken
heart, it is unbearable. Of course it was my friend Thomas. I stood on
the staircase unable to do anything, for he was quickly borne from the
arms of Fraulein by a big footman, and no doubt deposited in a brougham
in the outer darkness. Poor Thomas!

I hoped that the right sort of mother would be at home to unroll that
pink bundle, a mother who would pretend that it could not be her darling
who was crying, but a strange little boy with a face quite unknown to
her. Where could he have come from? And so on, until Thomas would be
ashamed to be seen with a strange face, and would smile, and then his
mother would say, "What is it, my darling?" because, of course, it was
her own darling who was crying, and she would never rest till she knew
why.

I went back to the drawing-room quite happy that Thomas should be
unrolled by the right sort of mother, and as I walked across the room,
my foot slipped on something. I looked to see what it was I had trodden
on. It was a short screw, Thomas's precious possession. "That was why
the poor pink bundle was crying!"

"Hyacinth," I said, "who was Thomas?"

"Which one? There was little Thomas and the Thomas who lives a long way
off, and then just plain Thomas."

"I mean the fat little Thomas who danced so hard."

"Oh! that's the little Thomas," said Hyacinth.

"Where does he live?" I asked.

"Oh, quite close; when we go to tea there we walk. He hasn't got a
mother, so there's no drawing-room. She died," added Hyacinth, as if it
was an every-day occurrence that Thomas should be left without a mother,
instead of its being a heart-breaking tragedy. A child with no mother,
no mother to unwrap the pink bundle, no mother to grieve for the screw,
no mother to understand th