e great house was their own again.

All the peasants of the neighbourhood came in a body to congratulate
them. Those who could not get into Volodia's little sitting-room
remained standing outside, and looked in respectfully through the
window; while the spokesman read a long speech he had prepared for the
occasion.

Mr. Olsheffsky made an appropriate reply, and then, turning to Volodia
and the old servants, he thanked them in a few simple words for their
goodness to the children.

"You might have knocked me flat down with a birch twig," said Uncle
Volodia afterwards, when talking it over with Adam. "The idea of
thanking _us_ for what was nothing at all but a real pleasure! He's a
good man, the _Barin_!"

The springtime found the children and their father settled once more
in their old home, with Adam, Var-Vara, and Alexis; and life flowing
on very much as it had always done, except for the absence of the
gentle, motherly, Anna Olsheffsky.

Uncle Volodia continued to look after his shop with zeal; and the two
rooms with the gilt furniture, which Mr. Olsheffsky had insisted on
his not removing, became objects of the greatest pride and joy to him.

He never allowed anyone but himself to dust them, and in spare moments
he polished the looking-glass with a piece of leather, kept carefully
for the purpose in a cigar box.

"It's a great pleasure to me," he remarked one day to a neighbour, "to
think that when I leave this house to Boris Andreievitch--as I intend
to do, after old Maria--it will have two rooms that are fit for_any_one
of the family to sleep in. He'll never have to be ashamed of _them_!"

On his seventieth birthday, Elena--now grown a tall slim young lady,
with grave brown eyes--persuaded him that it was really time to take a
little rest, and enjoy himself.

He thereupon sold his stock, and devoted himself to gardening in the
yard at the back of his house; where he would sit on summer evenings
smoking his pipe, in the midst of giant dahlias and sunflowers.

Here Daria often came with Boris and Tulipan; and sitting by Uncle
Volodia's side, listened to the well-known stories she had heard since
her babyhood--always ending up with the same words in a tone of great
solemnity--

"And _this_, children, is a true story, every word of it!"

THE ANGEL AND THE LILIES.

A Norwegian Story.

It was a room at the top of a rough wooden house in Norway. Though it
was only a garret, it was all very white an