r. Melton; and then they all went
downstairs and had toast and boiled eggs for supper. Ariadne informed
her companions, looking up from her egg with a yolky smile, "Daddy told
Muvver the other day that 'Stashie had certainly learned to boil eggs
something _fine_! And he laughed, but Muvver didn't. Was it a joke?"

"They are very good eggs indeed, and well boiled," the new man answered.
She loved the way in which he conversed with her.

"Ought we to give her some idea?" asked the doctor in a low voice.

"I would wait until she asks," said the other.

But Paul's child never asked. Once or twice she remarked that Daddy was
away longer than usual "_vis_ time," but he had never been a very
steadily recurrent phenomenon in her life, and soon her little brain,
filled with new impressions, had forgotten that he ever used to come
back.

There were many new impressions. A great deal was happening nowadays.
Every morning something different, every day new people going and
coming. Aunt Marietta, Auntie Madeleine, Uncle George from Cleveland,
whom she'd seen only once or twice before, and Great-Aunt Hollister,
whom she knew very well and feared as well as she knew her. After a time
even the husbands began to appear, the husbands she had seen so rarely;
Aunt Marietta's husband, and Aunt Madeleine's--fat, bald Mr. Lowder, who
smelled of tobacco and soap and took her up on his lap--as much as he
had--and gave her a big round dollar and kissed her behind her ear and
smiled at her very kindly and held her very close. He said he liked
little girls, and he wished Auntie Madeleine would get him one some day
for a Christmas present. She informed him, filled with admiration at the
extent of her own knowledge, that he couldn't get a Christmas present
some day, but only just Christmas Day.

Mostly, however, they paid no attention to her, these many aunts and
uncles who came and went. And, oddly enough, Uncle Marius always shut
the door to Muvver's room when they came, and wouldn't let them, no
matter how much they wanted to, go in and see Muvver, who was, she
gathered, very sick. Ariadne didn't see, really, why they came at all,
since they couldn't see Muvver and they certainly never so much as
looked at 'Stashie, dear darling 'Stashie--more of a comfort these queer
days than ever before--and they never, never spoke to the new man, who
came and went as though nobody knew he was there. They would look right
at him and never see him. Everyt