o?"

"Do? It does everything. It gives you all your pretty frocks."

"But I am more comfy in my common frocks."

"Well, it gives you your nice food."

"I don't care nothing about food."

"It gives you your comfortable home, your pony, and----"

"Lord Grayleigh gave me my pony."

"Child, I cannot explain. It makes all the difference between comfort
and discomfort, between sorrow and happiness."

"Do you think so?" said Sibyl. "And father has gone away to give me a
nice house, and pretty clothes, and all the other things between being
comfy and discomfy; and you want to be rich very much, do you,
mother?"

"Very much indeed; I like the good things of life."

"I'll try and understand," said Sibyl. She turned wearily on her
pillow, and the next instant sleep had visited the perplexed little
brain.

CHAPTER X.

"Nursie," said Sibyl, two months after the events related in the last
chapter, "mother says that when my ownest father comes back again
we'll be very rich."

"Um," replied nurse, with a grunt, "do she?"

"Why do you speak in that sort of voice, nursie? It's very nice to be
rich. I have been having long talks with mother, and she has 'splained
things. It means a great deal to be rich. I am so glad that my father
is coming back a very, very rich man. I didn't understand at first. I
thought to be rich just meant to have lots of money, and big, big
houses, and heaps of bags of sweeties, and toys and ponies, and, oh,
the kind of things that don't matter a bit. But now I know what to be
rich really is."

"Yes, dear," said nurse. She was seated in the old nursery close to
the window. She was mending some of Sibyl's stockings. A little pile
of neatly mended pairs lay on the table, and there was a frock which
also wanted a darn reclining on the back of the old woman's chair.
Sibyl broke off and watched her nurse's movements with close interest.

"Why do you wear spectacles?" she asked suddenly.

"Because, my love, my sight is failing. I ain't as young as I was."

"What does 'not as young as you was' mean?"

"What I say, my dear."

"I notice," said Sibyl, thoughtfully, "that all very, very old people
say they're not as young as they was, and so you wear spectacles 'cos
you're not as young as you was, and 'cos you can't see as well as you
did."

"That's about it, Missy, and when I have to darn the stockings of a
naughty little Miss, and to mend holes in her dress, I have to put on
my glasses.