ed her into
their own hearts, their lives, their name. But to-day she asked
nothing more than a deep cranny in a dark cave.

She would have said that no human voice or presence could be anything
but a torture to her. And yet, when she hurried up the steps, she was
suddenly miraculously restored to cheerfulness by the tiny explosion
of a child's laughter instantly quenched. She knew that she was about
to be ambushed as usual. She must pretend to be completely surprised
once more, and altogether terrified with her perfect regularity.

Her soul had been so utterly surprised and terrified in the outer
world that this infantile parody was curiously welcome, since nothing
keeps the mind in balance on the tight-rope of sanity like the
counterweight that comedy furnishes to tragedy, farce to frenzy, and
puerility to solemnity.

The children called her "Auntie," but they were not hers except
through the adoption of a love that had to claim some kinship. They
looked like her children, though--so much so, indeed, that strangers
thought that she was their young mother. But it was because she looked
like their mother, who had died, that the American girl was a member
of this British household, inheriting some of its wealth and much of
its perilous destiny.

She had been ambuscaded in the street to-day by demons not of faery,
but of fact, that had leaped out at her from nowhere. It solaced her
somehow to burlesque the terror that had whelmed her, and, now that
she was assailed by ruthless thugs of five and seven years, the
shrieks she had not dared to release in the street she gave forth with
vigor, as two nightgowned tots flung themselves at her with
milk-curdling cries of:

"Boo-ooh!"

Holding up pink fat hands for pistols, they snapped their thumbs at
her and said:

"Bang! Bang!"

And she emitted most amusing squeals of anguish and staggered back,
stammering:

"Oh, p-p-please, Mr. Robbobber and Miss Burgurgular, take my l-l-life
but spare my m-m-money."

She had been so genuinely scared before that she marred the sacred
text now, and the First Murderer, who had all the conservative
instincts of childhood, had to correct her misquotation of the sacred
formula:

"No, no, Auntie. Say, 'Take my money but spare my life!' Now we dot to
do it all over."

"I beg your pardon humbly," she said, and went back to be ambushed
again. This time the boy had an inspiration. To murder and robbery he
would add scalping.

But Mar