ought to have someone with more experience to
watch over you. You know when I came back to you two years ago I
promised to stay so long as I could be a help to you, but--"

"Oh, Aunt Zelie! You do help us--don't go away!" cried Bess, clasping
her around the waist; Louise seized one of her hands tightly in both
her own, and Carl looked out the window with a flushed face.

"That is not fair, Aunt Zelie," was all he said.

He could never forget--nor could Bess--how she had come to them in
their loneliness, and taken the motherless little flock into her arms,
comforting them and wrapping them all about with her love and
sympathy. How could they ever do without her?

"You aren't going away, are you?" Helen asked, leaving her dolls and
coming to her side.

"I hope not, for I can't think what I should do without my children,"
she answered. And then they all snuggled around her on the old sofa
and talked things over. It was astonishing what a difference it
made--trying to look at the matter from all sides. Even Mrs. Ford's
indignation did not seem so very unreasonable when you stopped to
think how inconvenient it was to be without clothes-pins on Monday
morning.

"I know it does not seem exactly right as you put it, Aunt Zelie,"
Carl acknowledged, "but it was such fun, we couldn't have had so good
a time anywhere else."

"Suppose you found the Arnold children playing in our garden some day,
would you think that because they had found that they couldn't have so
good a time anywhere else, it was all right?"

"Why, auntie, those Arnold boys are not nice at all; we _couldn't_
have them in our garden," cried Louise.

"No one was living in the Brown house--it is different," Carl began.

"I know what she means," said Bess. "Just because it is fun isn't a
good excuse."

"That is it," answered her aunt. "I believe in fun if only you do not
put it first, above thought for the feelings or property of others. I
am sure you did not mean to do wrong, but it would not do for me to
let you go on being thoughtless, would it?"

"Mrs. Ford isn't a bit like you, Aunt Zelie; she was dreadfully mad at
Ikey, and said he must stay in his room all day," remarked Louise.

"I am sorry for Mrs. Ford. I rather think _I_ should be dreadfully mad
too, if I were in her place. She is an old lady and is used to having
her household affairs move on smoothly, and one day she finds her
servants upset and some of her property missing, all because c