y used to play with
stays there and mourns them with you.

I saw a wild look come into her eyes, and I determined to quiet her at
any cost.

"There, there, ma'am," I said quickly, "'tis only their playthings.
Supposing they were there, now, and enjoying them! You go in and take
your nap, as the doctor ordered, and leave me behind..."

She saw what I meant in a twinkling and the colour jumped into her face
again. She turned and hurried in and just as she went out of sight she
looked over her shoulder, timid like, and waved her hand--only a bit of
a wave, but I saw it.

Under a big stone in front of me, for that part of the grounds was left
wild, like a little grove, I saw a rusty tin biscuit box, and as I
opened it, curiously, to pass the time, I found it full of little tin
platters and cups. Hardly thinking what I did, I arranged them as if
laid out for tea, on a flat stone, and left them there. When I went to
awaken her for lunch, I started, for some more of those platters were
on the table by her bed and a white woolly rabbit and a picture book!
She blushed, but I took no notice, and after her luncheon I spied her
going quickly back to the little grove.

"Madam's taking a turn for the better, surely," Hodges said to me that
afternoon. "She's eating like a Christian now. What have you done to
her, Miss Umbleby?" (I went as "Miss" for it's much easier to get a
place so.)

"Mr. Hodges," I said, facing him squarely, "the doctors don't know
everything. You know as well as I that it's out of nature not to
mention children, where they're missed every hour of the day and every
day of the month. It's easing the heart that's wanted--not smothering
it."

"What d'you mean?" he says, staring at me.

"I mean toys and such like," I answered him, very firm, "and talk of
them that's not here to use them, and even pretending that they are, if
that will bring peace of mind, Mr. Hodges."

He rubbed his clean shaven chin with his hand.

"Well, well!" he said at last. "Well, well, well! You're a good girl,
Miss Umbleby, and a kind one, that's certain. I never thought o' such
a thing. Maybe it's all right, though. But who could understand a
woman, anyway?"

"That's not much to understand," said I, shortly, and left him staring
at me.

She came in late in the afternoon with the rabbit under her arm and
there was Mr. Hodges in the drawing-room laying out the tea--we always
had everything done as if the master wa