tion door, Peter said, "How do you
do?" in his best manner, and hastened to ask what the white mark was on
the coal for.

"To mark how much coal there be," said the Porter, "so as we'll know if
anyone nicks it. So don't you go off with none in your pockets, young
gentleman!"

This seemed, at the time but a merry jest, and Peter felt at once that
the Porter was a friendly sort with no nonsense about him. But later the
words came back to Peter with a new meaning.

Have you ever gone into a farmhouse kitchen on a baking day, and seen
the great crock of dough set by the fire to rise? If you have, and if
you were at that time still young enough to be interested in everything
you saw, you will remember that you found yourself quite unable to
resist the temptation to poke your finger into the soft round of dough
that curved inside the pan like a giant mushroom. And you will remember
that your finger made a dent in the dough, and that slowly, but quite
surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough looked quite the same as it
did before you touched it. Unless, of course, your hand was extra dirty,
in which case, naturally, there would be a little black mark.

Well, it was just like that with the sorrow the children had felt at
Father's going away, and at Mother's being so unhappy. It made a deep
impression, but the impression did not last long.

They soon got used to being without Father, though they did not forget
him; and they got used to not going to school, and to seeing very little
of Mother, who was now almost all day shut up in her upstairs room
writing, writing, writing. She used to come down at tea-time and read
aloud the stories she had written. They were lovely stories.

The rocks and hills and valleys and trees, the canal, and above all, the
railway, were so new and so perfectly pleasing that the remembrance of
the old life in the villa grew to seem almost like a dream.

Mother had told them more than once that they were 'quite poor now,' but
this did not seem to be anything but a way of speaking. Grown-up people,
even Mothers, often make remarks that don't seem to mean anything in
particular, just for the sake of saying something, seemingly. There was
always enough to eat, and they wore the same kind of nice clothes they
had always worn.

But in June came three wet days; the rain came down, straight as lances,
and it was very, very cold. Nobody could go out, and everybody shivered.
They all went up to the doo