hat she could have no idea of the happiness of a
child's touch till she was a mother; that she herself had not an inkling
till then. But perhaps some poor substitute for that exquisite feeling
was vouchsafed to Hester.

"The tail is still on," she whispered, not too cheerfully, but as one
who in darkness sees light beyond.

The cow's tail was painted in blue upon its side.

"When I bought it," said Regie, in a strangled voice, "and it was a
great-deal-of-money cow, I did wish its tail had been out behind; but I
think now it is safer like that."

"All the best cows have their tails on the side," said Hester. "And
to-morrow morning, when you are dressed, run up to my room, and you will
find it just like it was before." And she carefully put aside the bits
with the injured animal.

"And now what has Stella got?"

Stella produced a bag of "bull's-eyes," which, in striking contrast with
the cow, had, in the course of the drive home, cohered so tightly
together that it was doubtful if they would ever be separated again.

"Fraeulein never eats bull's-eyes," said Mary, who was what her parents
called "a very truthful child."

"I eats them," said Stella, reversing her small cauliflower-like person
on the sofa till only a circle of white rims with a nucleus of coventry
frilling, with two pink legs kicking gently upward, were visible.

Stella always turned upsidedown if the conversation took a personal
turn. In later and more conventional years we find a poor equivalent for
marking our disapproval by changing the subject.

Hester had hardly set Stella right side upward when the door opened once
more and Mrs. Gresley entered, hot and exhausted.

"Run up-stairs, my pets," she said. "Hester, you should not keep them
down here now. It is past their tea-time."

"We came ourselves, mother," said Regie. "Fruaelein said we might, to
show Auntie Hester our secrets."

"Well, never mind; run away now," said the poor mother, sitting down
heavily in a low chair, "and take Boulou."

"You are tired out," said Hester, slipping on to her knees and unlacing
her sister-in-law's brown boots.

Mrs. Gresley looked with a shade of compunction at the fragile kneeling
figure, with its face crimsoned by the act of stooping and by the
obduracy of the dust-ingrained boot-laces. But as she looked she noticed
the flushed cheeks, and, being a diviner of spirits, wondered what
Hester was ashamed of now.

As Hester rose her sister-in-law held