and I could not help noticing that, though The
Seraph was the youngest and tenderest, his six were the most stinging.

When we had been sent to our bedroom to say our prayers, and change our
pitifully inadequate night clothes for day things, I put the question that
was burning in my mind.

"Did either of you see _her_?"

"Who?"

"Lucy, sitting there in the chair."

Angel's brown eyes were blank.

"I saw her _clothes_. What sickens me is that the dragon took that
spy-glass. You see if I don't get it yet." (Mrs. Handsomebody was "the
dragon" in our vernacular.)

"Did _you_ see her, Seraph?"

The Seraph was sitting on the floor, his head on his knees. He raised a
tear-flushed face.

"I'm 'most too cwushed to wemember," he said, huskily. "But I _fink_ Lucy
was fat. It's a vewy bad fing to be fat, 'cos the cane hurts worser."

I turned from such infantile imbecility to the exhilarating reflection that
I was the only one to whom Lucy had shown herself--her chosen knight!

I was burning to do her service, yet the passage that led to the attic
stronghold was well guarded. Two days had passed before I made the attempt.
I had been sent upstairs from the tea-table to wash my hands--though they
were only comfortably soiled--and after I had dipped them in a basin of
water that had done service for both Angel and The Seraph, I gave them a
good rub on my trouser legs, as I tip-toed to the foot of the attic stairs.
Cautiously, with fast-beating heart, I mounted, and tried the door. It was
locked fast. I pressed my eye against the keyhole, and made out in the
gloom the dark shape of the trunk, sinister, forbidding, inaccessible. No
rustle of lilac silk, no faintest perfume, no appealing sigh from the
gentle Lucy greeted me. All was dark and quiet. "Bide the time!" Who knew
but that some day I might set her free?

Yet my throat ached as I slowly made my way back to the table, presented my
hands for a rather sceptical inspection by Mrs. Handsomebody, and dropped
languidly into my seat.

The Seraph gave me a look of sympathy--even understanding--perhaps he had
heard me mount the distant attic stairs; his hearing was wonderfully acute.
He chewed in silence for a moment and then he made one of those seemingly
irrelevant remarks of his that, somehow, always set our little world
a-rocking.

"One fing about Lucy," he said, "she was always sweet-tempud."

"Who?" snapped Mrs. Handsomebody.

"Lucy--" repeated The Seraph. "Such