ndeed all the brighter for the gray outside--for was there
not the delight, the _delicious_ delight, of the coming back again, the
showing all the changes in the garden since Percy was last there, the
new toys and other little presents that Ted had received, and listening
to Percy's thrilling accounts of school-life, the relating his own
adventures?

Still there were times, especially now that Ted was really growing very
sensible, that he wished for some other companion in his simple daily
life, some one who, like the little fishes, did not have to go to
school. And now and then, when, in his rare expeditions to the sea-side
town not far off, he saw little groups of brothers and sisters trotting
along together, or when in the stories his mother read to him he heard
of happy nursery parties, Ted used to wish _he_ had a little "bruvver
or sister, even a baby one would be very nice." For deep down in his
loving heart there was already the true manly spirit, the longing to have
something to take care of and protect; something tinier and more tender
even than wee Ted himself.

And to make his child-life complete this pretty thing came to him. With
the autumn days, just when Ted was beginning to feel a little sad at the
summer brightness going away, and his garden work had come to be chiefly
helping old David to sweep up the fast-falling leaves, there came to Ted
a dear little baby sister. She was the dearest little thing--bright-eyed
and merry, and looking as if she was ready for all sorts of fun. She was
stronger than Ted had been, and to tell the truth I think I must say
prettier. For sweet and fair and dear as was Ted's face both in baby- and
boy-hood, he was not what one would call pretty. Not the sort of child
whose proud nurse comes home with wonderful stories of ladies stopping
her in the street to ask whose beautiful baby he was--not a splendidly
vigorous, stalwart little man like a small eight-years-old of my
acquaintance whose mother was lately afraid to walk about the streets
of Berlin with him lest the old Emperor, as he sometimes does, should
want to have him to make an officer of! No; Ted, though lithe and active
as a squirrel, merry as a cricket, was not a "showy" child. He was just
our own dear little Ted, our happy-hearted Christmas child.

But I suppose there never was in this world any one so happy but that it
was _possible_ for him to be happier. And this "more happiness" came to
Ted in the shape of his