d the baby cried himself to sleep
without her, and lay with the pathetic tear marks still on his cheeks,
but her tired mother had only looked reproachfully at her and had not
said one word. Oh, dear! If she could only be a good girl! If only she
might pass one day being good all day long with nothing to regret!

Now with the wailing of the violin her soul grew hungry and sad, and a
strange, unchildish fear crept over her, a fear of the years to
come--so long and endless they would be, always coming, coming, one
after another; and here she was, never to stop living, and every day
doing something that she ought not and every evening repenting
it--and her father might stop loving her, and her sister might stop
loving her, and her little brother might stop loving her, and Bobby
might die--and even her mother might die or stop loving her, and she
might grow up and marry a man who forgot after a while to love
her--and she might be very poor--even poorer than they were now, and
have to wash dishes every day and no one to help her--until at last
she could bear the sadness no longer, and could not repent as hard as
she ought, there where she could not go down on her knees and just cry
and cry. So she slipped away and crept in the darkness to her own
room, where her mother found her half an hour later on her knees
beside the bed fast asleep. She lovingly undressed the limp, weary
little girl, lifted her tenderly and laid her curly head on the
pillow, and kissed her cheek with a repentant sigh of her own,
regretting that she must lay so many tasks on so small a child.

CHAPTER II

WATCHING THE BEES

Father Ballard walked slowly up the path from the garden, wiping his
brow, for the heat was oppressive. "Mary, my dear, I see signs of
swarming. The bees are hanging out on that hive under the Tolman
Sweet. Where's Betty?"

"She's down cellar churning, but she can leave. Bobby's getting
fretful, anyway, and she can take him under the trees and watch the
bees and amuse him. Betty!" Mary Ballard went to the short flight of
steps leading to the paved basement, dark and cool: "Betty, father
wants you to watch the bees, dear. Find Bobby. He's so still I'm
afraid he's out at the currant bushes again, and he'll make himself
sick. Keep an eye on the hive under the Tolman Sweet particularly,
dear."

Gladly Betty bounded up the steps and darted away to find the baby who
was still called the baby by reason of his being the last ar