an instant, but soon forget to wonder; for when
the Dream Fairy tells us tales we are only as little children, sitting
round with open eyes, believing all, though marvelling that such things
should be.

Each night, when all else in the house sleeps, the door of that room
opens noiselessly, and the man enters and closes it behind him. Each
night he draws away the white sheet, and takes the small dead body in his
arms; and through the dark hours he paces softly to and fro, holding it
close against his breast, kissing it and crooning to it, like a mother to
her sleeping baby.

When the first ray of dawn peeps into the room, he lays the dead child
back again, and smooths the sheet above her, and steals away.

And he succeeds and prospers in all things, and each day he grows richer
and greater and more powerful.

CHAPTER III

We had much trouble with our heroine. Brown wanted her ugly. Brown's
chief ambition in life is to be original, and his method of obtaining the
original is to take the unoriginal and turn it upside down.

If Brown were given a little planet of his own to do as he liked with, he
would call day, night, and summer, winter. He would make all his men and
women walk on their heads and shake hands with their feet, his trees
would grow with their roots in the air, and the old cock would lay all
the eggs while the hens sat on the fence and crowed. Then he would step
back and say, "See what an original world I have created, entirely my own
idea!"

There are many other people besides Brown whose notion of originality
would seem to be precisely similar.

I know a little girl, the descendant of a long line of politicians. The
hereditary instinct is so strongly developed in her that she is almost
incapable of thinking for herself. Instead, she copies in everything her
elder sister, who takes more after the mother. If her sister has two
helpings of rice pudding for supper, then she has two helpings of rice
pudding. If her sister isn't hungry and doesn't want any supper at all,
then she goes to bed without any supper.

This lack of character in the child troubles her mother, who is not an
admirer of the political virtues, and one evening, taking the little one
on her lap, she talked seriously to her.

"Do try to think for yourself," said she. "Don't always do just what
Jessie does, that's silly. Have an idea of your own now and then. Be a
little original."

The child promised she'd try