e head with the tip of her finger, and
feeding it with dandelion flowers, which it loved.

It was through the hedgehog that rather a queer thing happened one day
in the garden.

I think I told you that Una's father went away somewhere by train once
a week, and usually came back either the next day or two or three days
later, but I don't think I told you that sometimes he brought back
gentlemen to stay with him; and occasionally these gentlemen stayed
until Monsieur Gen went away again the next week, though more
frequently they remained only one night at the Grange and went away
again the next day. Now and then, however, they stayed much longer
than that--for weeks together indeed; and Una noticed that the ones who
stayed longest always looked very pale and thin, and very, very sad, as
if they had had much trouble.

But she did not see very much of any of her father's visitors--only
coming across one or another of them sometimes on the stairs or in the
garden; and the little Carews had never seen any of them, for when they
were playing there with Una the strange gentlemen did not come into the
garden.

Una used to wonder sometimes what made all the gentlemen who came to
her father's house look so sad. All men did not look sad, she knew,
for the baker's man who came to the house looked quite jolly, and had a
round, red face which seemed always laughing; and Mr. Carew, her little
friends' father, looked quite cheerful, too, quite different from her
own grave father.

Poor little girl! It was sad for her, this mystery which hung about
her life; and I think she would have grown into a very quiet, grave
little maiden in those days if she had not had the little Carews to
play and be merry with.

One day the children had been having a game on the terrace in the front
of the house. It was a new game which Tom had made up, and which they
all liked very much. One of them stood, blindfolded, in front of a
heap of little sticks at one end of the terrace, and the others all had
to hop on one leg and try to get the sticks, one by one, without the
blindfolded one catching them; the fun of the game being that it was
very difficult not to make a noise hopping on the gravel, and the
"blind man" usually pretended not to hear, and then made a dash at the
hopping thief just as he or she was carrying off a stick.

They had been playing so long at this game that they had made
themselves quite tired and hot, and had sat down on th