wood on the place. On the other side of the hall there is a room for
Merton. Now do me a favor: don't look, or talk, or think, any more
to-night. It has been a long, hard day. Indeed"--looking at my
watch--"it is already to-morrow morning, and you know how much we
shall have to do. Let us go back and get a little supper, and then
take all the rest we can."

Winifred yielded, and Bobsey and Winnie waked up for a time at the
word "supper." Then we knelt around our hearth, and made it an altar
to God, for I wished the children never to forget our need of His
fatherly care and help.

"I will now take the children upstairs and put them to bed, and then
come back, for I can not leave this wood fire just yet," remarked my
wife.

I burst out laughing and said, "You have never been at home until
this night, when you are camping in an old house you never saw
before, and I can prove it by one question--When have you taken the
children UPSTAIRS to bed before?"

"Why--why--never."

"Of course you haven't--city flats all your life. But your nature is
not perverted. In natural homes for generations mothers have taken
their children upstairs to bed, and, forgetting the habit of your
life, you speak according to the inherited instinct of the mother-
heart."

"O Robert, you have so many fine-spun theories! Yet it is a little