Her hands she puts with quickness.
Although she wears upon her face
The shadow of a sickness."

It was this "shadow of a sickness," that served to segregate Margaret
to the extent that was really necessary for her well being. To have
shared perpetually in the almost superhuman activities of the family
might have forever dulled that delicate spirit to which Eleanor came
to owe so much in the various stages of her development.

Margaret put her arm about the child after the ordeal of the first
dinner at the big table.

"Father does not bite," she said, "but Grandfather does. The others
are quite harmless. If Grandfather shows his teeth, run for your
life."

"I don't know where to run to," Eleanor answered seriously, whereupon
Margaret hugged her. Her Aunt Margaret would have been puzzling to
Eleanor beyond any hope of extrication, but for the quick imagination
that unwound her riddles almost as she presented them. For one
terrible minute Eleanor had believed that Hugh Hutchinson senior did
bite, he looked so much like some of the worst of the pictures in
Little Red Riding Hood.

"While you are here I'm going to pretend you're my very own child,"
Margaret told Eleanor that first evening, "and we'll never, never tell
anybody all the foolish games we play and the things we say to each
other. I can just barely manage to be grown up in the bosom of my
family, and when I am in the company of your esteemed Aunt Beulah, but
up here in my room, Eleanor, I am never grown up. I play with dolls."

"Oh! do you really?"

"I really do," Margaret said. She opened a funny old chest in the
corner of the spacious, high studded chamber. "And here are some of
the dolls that I play with." She produced a manikin dressed primly
after the manner of eighteen-thirty, prim parted hair over a small
head festooned with ringlets, a fichu, and mits painted on her
fingers. "Beulah," she said with a mischievous flash of a grimace at
Eleanor. "Gertrude,"--a dashing young brunette in riding clothes.
"Jimmie,"--a curly haired dandy. "David,"--a serious creature with a
monocle. "I couldn't find Peter," she said, "but we'll make him some
day out of cotton and water colors."

"Oh! can you make dolls?" Eleanor cried in delight, "real dolls with
hair and different colored eyes?"

"I can make pretty good ones," Margaret smiled; "manikins like
these,--a Frenchwoman taught me."

"Oh; did she? And do you play that the