bedroom at night.

It was there and then, during those two delicious months, before the
winter came with its cold and dreariness, that Cecile lost the look
of care which had made her pretty face old before its time. She was a
child again--rather she was a child at last. Oh! the joy of gathering
real, real flowers with her own little brown hands. Oh! the delight
of sitting under the hedges and listening to the birds singing.
Maurice took it as a matter of course; Toby sniffed the country air
solemnly, but with due and reasonable appreciation; but to Cecile
these two months in the country came as the embodiment of the
babyhood and childhood she had never known.

In the country Cecile was only ten years old.

When first they had arrived at the old farm she had discovered a
hiding place for her purse. Back of the attic, were she had and
Maurice and Toby slept, was a little chamber, so narrow--running so
completely away into the roof--that even Cecile could only explore it
on her hands and knees.

This little room she did examine carefully, holding a candle in her
hand, in the dead of night, when every soul on the busy farm was
asleep.

Woe for Cecile had Aunt Lydia heard a sound; but Aunt Lydia Purcell
slept heavily, and the child's movements were so gentle and careful
that they would scarcely have aroused a wakeful mouse. Cecile found
in the extreme corner of this tiny attic in the roof an old broken
wash-hand-stand lying on its back. In the wash-hand-stand was a