clothes? Bobbie slipped from the room. As she went she heard the key
turned in the lock of the trunk. Her heart was beating horribly. WHY
hadn't Father taken his clothes? When Mother came out of the room,
Bobbie flung tightly clasping arms round her waist, and whispered:--

"Mother--Daddy isn't--isn't DEAD, is he?"

"My darling, no! What made you think of anything so horrible?"

"I--I don't know," said Bobbie, angry with herself, but still clinging
to that resolution of hers, not to see anything that Mother didn't mean
her to see.

Mother gave her a hurried hug. "Daddy was quite, QUITE well when I heard
from him last," she said, "and he'll come back to us some day. Don't
fancy such horrible things, darling!"

Later on, when the Russian stranger had been made comfortable for the
night, Mother came into the girls' room. She was to sleep there in
Phyllis's bed, and Phyllis was to have a mattress on the floor, a
most amusing adventure for Phyllis. Directly Mother came in, two white
figures started up, and two eager voices called:--

"Now, Mother, tell us all about the Russian gentleman."

A white shape hopped into the room. It was Peter, dragging his quilt
behind him like the tail of a white peacock.

"We have been patient," he said, "and I had to bite my tongue not to
go to sleep, and I just nearly went to sleep and I bit too hard, and it
hurts ever so. DO tell us. Make a nice long story of it."

"I can't make a long story of it to-night," said Mother; "I'm very
tired."

Bobbie knew by her voice that Mother had been crying, but the others
didn't know.

"Well, make it as long as you can," said Phil, and Bobbie got her arms
round Mother's waist and snuggled close to her.

"Well, it's a story long enough to make a whole book of. He's a writer;
he's written beautiful books. In Russia at the time of the Czar one
dared not say anything about the rich people doing wrong, or about the
things that ought to be done to make poor people better and happier. If
one did one was sent to prison."

"But they CAN'T," said Peter; "people only go to prison when they've
done wrong."

"Or when the Judges THINK they've done wrong," said Mother. "Yes, that's
so in England. But in Russia it was different. And he wrote a beautiful
book about poor people and how to help them. I've read it. There's
nothing in it but goodness and kindness. And they sent him to prison for
it. He was three years in a horrible dungeon, with hardly any li