plastic little mind of his, to be proper enough to
rest content with that lucid exposition of the wonder of life.

The time was near for Clara's six months of Worth to begin. Katie had
promised she would bring him to her wherever she was; and Clara was in
Paris and meaning to remain there. It meant that Worth would spend the
winter in Paris, away from them; from time to time--as the custom of the
city dictated--he would be taken for perfunctory little walks in the
_Bois_ and would be told to "run and play" if he asked indelicate
questions concerning the things of life.

In the light of this story of the ways of growth the arrangement about
Worth seemed an unnatural and a brutal thing.

She did not believe that, as a matter of fact, Clara wanted Worth. The
maternal passion was less strong in Clara than the passion for
_lingerie_. But she wanted Worth with her for six months because that
kept him from Wayne and Katie for six months and she knew that they
did want him.

The poor little fellow's summer had not been what Katie had planned. Part
of the time he had been with his father and part of the time with
her--that thing of division again, and as neither of them had been happy
any of the time Worth had had to suffer for it. He seemed to have to
suffer so much through the fact that grown-up people did not know how to
manage their lives.

Suddenly he sat up. "Aunt Kate," he asked, "when's Miss Ann coming back?"

"I don't know, dear."

"Well where _is_ she?"

"She's been--called away."

"Well I wish she'd come back. I like Miss Ann, Aunt Kate."

"Yes, dear; we all do."

"She tells nice stories, too. Only they're about fairies that are just
fairies--not worms and things that are really so. Do you suppose Miss Ann
knows, Aunt Kate, that she used to be a frog?"

Katie laughed and tried to elucidate her point about the frog. But she
wondered what difference it might not have made had Ann known that, as
Worth put it, she used to be a frog. With Ann, fairy stories would have
to be about things not real. All Ann's life it had been so. It suddenly
seemed that it might have made all the difference in the world had Ann
known that the things most wonderful were the things that were.

Or rather, had the world in which Ann lived cared to know real things for
precious things, the desire for life as the most radiant thing that had
ever been upon the earth. Ann would have found the world a different
place had men known lif