arine one teeny-weeny
bit.--Sure we doesn't, Darby?"

"Joan!" exclaimed Darby in a shocked tone, although he smiled as he
peeped in the direction of the front door, for already he had learned
that Aunt Catharine had a trick of pouncing upon him when he least
expected. It was embarrassing, to say the least of it, and Darby
disliked it greatly.

Captain Dene pulled at his moustache as though puzzled how to act. He
quite understood how little there was about his aunt's grim presence to
attract a soft little creature like Joan--for a while at least. After a
time he knew things would be on a freer footing between them; therefore
he thought it better to take no notice of his small daughter's
frankly-spoken sentiments, and after a pause he said,--

"You are forgetting Eric, surely. He will soon be old enough to play
with you, and you must be very gentle with him, you know."

"Baby!" cried Joan in fine scorn. "Why, how could we play wif him? he
doesn't know no games."

"I think you needn't count much on Eric, father," put in Darby wisely;
"he's nearly always sleeping or crying, and nurse hardly ever lets us
touch him. It's because he's delikid, she says. So when you're away
there'll just be Joan and me," added the little lad sorrowfully.

Suddenly Joan spoke again, asking a question that awoke afresh the pain
at her father's heart--a pain so sharp, so deep-seated as to be at times
almost unbearable.

"When you have to go away in the big ship wif the solgers, why did
mamsie not stay and take care of us? Other chil'ens has nice lovely
muvers. Why have we none, daddy?"

Why, ah, why?

"Does she not love us any more, father?" whispered Darby, in broken,
quivering tones--Darby, who remembered his fair young mother as one
remembers a pleasing dream.

"Will she never come back no more? Shall we not see her again--never,
never?" asked Joan shrilly.

"Listen to me, my darlings," said Captain Dene, in a solemn, earnest
voice, after a pause, during which he wondered how he should answer his
children's questions. "Mother has gone to live with God in heaven. Her
body was tired and worn out, and in a way it had grown too small for the
spirit within. And just as you leave off wearing your garments when they
grow shabby or small, and father provides you with new things, so mother
has left her weary, frail body behind and gone to God, the great and
loving Father of all, where she shall be clothed anew."

"But wasn't she put in t