it was
crying.

"Kirk! What's up?" Ken lifted him and held him rather close.

"You weren't here," Kirk sniffed; "I got sort of rather l-lonely, so I
thought I'd come in with you--and the b-bed was perfectly empty, and I
couldn't find you. I t-thought you were teasing me."

"I was taking a little walk," Ken said. "Here, curl up in bed--you're
frozen. No, I'm not going away again--never any more, ducky. It was nice
in the garden," he added.

"The garden?" Kirk repeated, still clinging to him. "But you smell
of--of--oh, rope, and sawdust, and--and, Ken, your face is wet!"

* * * * *

Mrs. Sturgis protested bitterly against going away. She felt quite able
to stay at home. To be sure, she couldn't sleep at all, and her head
ached all the time, and she couldn't help crying over almost
everything--but it was impossible that she should leave the children.
In spite of her half-hysterical protests, the next week saw her ready to
depart for Hilltop with Miss McClough, who was to take the journey with
her.

"You needn't worry a scrap," laughed Felicia, quite convincingly, at the
taxi door. "We've seen Mr. Dodge, and there'll be money enough. You just
get well as quick as ever you can."

"Good-by, my darlings," faltered poor Mrs. Sturgis, quite ready to
collapse again. "Good-by, Kirk--my precious, precious baby! How can I!"

And the taxicab moved away, giving them just one glimpse of their mother
with her poor head on Miss McClough's capable shoulder.

"Well," Ken remarked, "here we are."

And there was really nothing more to be said on the subject.

Such a strange house! Maggie and Norah gone; Felicia cooking queer
meals--principally poached eggs--in the kitchen; Miss Bolton failing to
appear every morning at ten o'clock as she had done for the last three
years; Mother gone, and not even a letter from her--nothing but a
type-written report from the physician at Hilltop.

Gone also, as Kirk discovered, was the lowboy beside the library door.
It was a most satisfactory piece of furniture. From its left-hand corner
you could make a direct line to the window-seat. It also had smoothly
graceful brass handles, and a surface delicious to the touch. When Kirk,
stumbling in at the library door, failed to encounter it as usual, he
was as much startled as though he had found a serpent in its stead. He
tried for it several times, and when his hands came against the
bookshelves he stopped dead, ve