heard half a mile; upon which Mrs. Royden snatched
him up, and landed him in a clothes-press, before he knew what new
disaster was going to happen. His cries grew fainter and fainter to the
ears of the family in the sitting-room, until, the dungeon door being
closed, they were muffled and smothered altogether.

His mother, having disposed of him, reappeared in one of her worst
humors.

"Go about your work, Hepsy!" she cried. "Lizzie, go and wash George's
face. Stop your sniveling! What are you running off for, Sarah?"

"To get out of the noise," said Sarah.

"I've as good a mind to box your ears as ever I had to eat!" exclaimed
her mother. "Sit down and finish that seam, you saucy thing!"

Sarah sat down, with a very wry face, while Mr. Royden, looking
melancholy and displeased, left the house.

By dinner-time the children had worn off their ill temper, and Mrs.
Royden had recovered her equanimity.

"Come, now, let us see if we can't have peace in the family," said Mr.
Royden, as he sat down at the table, addressing the children, but
intending the words for his wife's ear as well.

"Sammy keeps making faces at me!" complained Willie, whose eyes were
still red with crying.

"O, I didn't!" exclaimed Samuel, with great candor.

"I seen him!" said Georgie.

"I was only doing _so_,"--and Sam, throwing his head to one side, winked
with his left eye and looked up at the ceiling with the other.

"What did you do that for?" asked Mr. Royden, beginning to feel
irritated again.

"I was thinking how the old goose does when she thinks it's going to
rain," replied Sam, performing the operation again, to the amusement of
the children.

Mr. Royden smiled.

"Haven't you anything else to do but to watch the old goose?" he asked,
pleasantly. "How about that pillow?"

"O, that's fixed! I'm going to sleep on it to-night, to try it."

"Hepsy,"--Mr. Royden seemed just to have discovered that she was not at
the table,--"there's room for you. Why don't you sit down?"

"O, she'd just as lief wait and tend the baby," said Mrs. Royden.

"But the baby is still."

"She wants to read our Chester's letter," spoke up James, a lad of
fifteen, so loud that Hepsy could hear him in the next room.

"Come, Hepsy! come and eat your dinner," cried Mr. Royden.

She said she was not hungry; but he insisted; and she sat down at the
table, looking very pale, and with really no appetite.

Mr. Royden then proceeded to disclose the news