lastics criss-cross over her ankles."

"And _white stockings_!"

Helen contracted her eyebrows sternly. "Stop, children!" she chided.
"Mahala's a good woman from the top of her head--"

"Make-b'lieve bangs," murmured irrepressible Archie.

"--to the soles of her feet."

"Cloth slippers, you mean."

Helen's eyes tried not to twinkle. "She's as much better than I am
as--as--you can think," she ended, lamely.

The Arabs laughed in derisive chorus.

"But, honest, Helen, it's goin' to be so lonesome an' poky!" Molly
wailed over her empty saucer. "We sha'n't have a speck of fun till you
come home again."

"A whole year!"

"Twelve months. Four times twelve's forty-eight. Forty-eight times
seven's--"

"Three hundred 'n' sixty-five!" concluded Roy, scornfully. Roy was in
the grammar grade, and was regarded as an oracle in arithmetic.

The baby woke up and lifted her voice hungrily, and Helen ran away to
her. The busy afternoon followed the busy morning on swift wings, and it
was almost supper-time before she could sit down and think a minute.
Then she held Uncle 'Gene's letter in her lap and thought about that.
"Let her come soon," it said, "and stay anyway a year. She has real
musical talent, and Bab's Professor Grafmann will develop it if anybody
can. He's a genius. Besides, we all want her, and the child must need a
breathing-spell after trying so long to tame those wild Arabs. Yon can
surely find somebody else to tutor them."

Yes, oh yes, there was Mahala! She was all engaged to come and do it.
She was good-hearted and strong. She would be sure to treat them all
well and take splendid care of Motherdie. Helen rocked back and forth
contentedly. They wanted her to go--father and mother, and the Arabs
would soon get used to doing without her. Dear little Arabs! She looked
down at the smallest one of them, still trying to stand the clothes-pins
round the edge of the big bright pan. She was improving steadily.

Let's see--to-morrow--day after--day after that. Then she was going. It
would be a new world opening suddenly to her, and she shut her eyes to
dream the wonderful dreams more uninterruptedly. Ever since she had
drummed baby tunes on the tin cake-box, by the hour at a time, she had
been growing hungrier to learn to materialize the untamed melodies that
ran riot in her mind, and made her fingers tingle with impotent longing.
And now it was coming--her chance! Three days away! But as the three
days came and