shall send Harry away with a few well-chosen words of farewell,
learn to love my husband and settle down to a life of quiet
domestic bliss. Oh, it's easy enough to intend!"

The girl's face wrinkled with a laugh that aged her. In that
moment it was a hard, evil face, and with a pang the elder woman
thought of that other face, so like, yet so unlike--the sweet pure
face of a girl that had given to a sordid home its one touch of
nobility. As under the lightning's flash we see the whole arc of
the horizon, so Mrs. Eppington looked and saw her child's life.
The gilded, over-furnished room vanished. She and a big-eyed,
fair-haired child, the only one of her children she had ever
understood, were playing wonderful games in the twilight among the
shadows of a tiny attic. Now she was the wolf, devouring Edith,
who was Red Riding Hood, with kisses. Now Cinderella's prince, now
both her wicked sisters. But in the favourite game of all, Mrs.
Eppington was a beautiful princess, bewitched by a wicked dragon,
so that she seemed to be an old, worn woman. But curly-headed
Edith fought the dragon, represented by the three-legged rocking-
horse, and slew him with much shouting and the toasting-fork. Then
Mrs. Eppington became again a beautiful princess, and went away
with Edith back to her own people.

In this twilight hour the misbehaviour of the "General," the
importunity of the family butcher, and the airs assumed by cousin
Jane, who kept two servants, were forgotten.

The games ended. The little curly head would be laid against her
breast "for five minutes' love," while the restless little brain
framed the endless question that children are for ever asking in