and Lanse himself grinned
cheerfully.

"Mind telling us the occasion of such heartfelt joy?" he inquired. But
Charlotte came up behind him, laid a warm velvet cheek against his for a
moment, patted her uncle on the shoulder, cried, "Good night to you,
gentlemen dear!" and ran away to bed.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

Charlotte let little Ellen slide down from her lap, washed and brushed.

"Now, Ellen, be a good girl," she said as she set about picking up the
various articles she had been using in the baby's bath and dressing.
"Charlotte's in a hurry."

The door-bell rang. Celia was in the kitchen, stirring up a pudding. It
was April now, and Celia's knee was so far mended that she could be
about the house without her crutches, with certain restrictions as to
standing, or using the knee in any way likely to strain it.

It was Charlotte who did the running about, and it was she who started
for the door now, after casting one hasty look around the bath-room to
make sure that the baby could do herself no harm.

Left to herself, Ellen investigated the resources of the bath-room and
found them wanting. After she had thrown two towels, the soap and her
own small tooth brush back into the tub from which she had lately
emerged, and which Charlotte had not yet emptied, she found her means of
entertainment at an end. The other toilet articles were all beyond her
reach. She gazed out of the window; there was nothing moving to be seen
but a row of Mrs. Fields's dish-towels waving in the wind.

She turned to the door. Charlotte had meant to latch it, but it was a
door with a peculiar trick of swinging slowly open an inch after it had
apparently been closed, and it had not been latched. Ellen pushed one
small hand into the crack and pulled it open.

Charlotte was nowhere to be seen or heard Across the hall was the door
of her room, ajar; and since doors ajar have somehow a singular charm
for babies, this one crossed to it and swung it wide.

Here was richness. This was Charlotte's workshop. She slept in a smaller
room adjoining, the baby in the crib by her side; and with that smaller
room little Ellen was familiar, but not with this. The tiny feet
travelled eagerly about, from one desirable object to another. And
presently she remembered the big, porcelain-lined bath-tub, There was
nothing Ellen liked so well as to throw things into that tub and see
them splash.

Two books crossed the