t the key to all that," said Miss Craydocke. "'The
very hairs of your head are all numbered.' It may be impossible with
us, you know, but not with Him."

"Miss Hapsie! you always did put me down, just when I thought I was
smart," said Sin Scherman.

Asenath loved to say "Miss Hapsie," now and then, to her friend,
ever since she had found out what she called her "squee little
name."

"But the little children, Miss Craydocke," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "It
seems to me Desire has got a right thought about it."

Mrs. Ripwinkley and Hazel always struck the same note. The same
delicate instinct moved them both. Hazel "knew what Desire meant;"
her mother did not let it be lost sight of that it was Desire who
had led the way in this thought of the children; so that the abrupt
beginning--the little flash out of the cloud--was quite forgotten
presently, in the tone of hearty understanding and genuine interest
with which the talk went on; and it was as if all that was generous
and mindfully suggestive in it had first and truly come from her.
They unfolded herself for her--these friendly ones--as she could not
do; out of her bluntness grew a graciousness that lay softly over
it; the cloud itself melted away and floated off; and Desire began
to sparkle again more lambently. For she was not one of the kind to
be meanly or enviously "put out."

"It seemed to me there must be a great many spare little corners
somewhere, for all these spare little children," she said, "and
that, lumped up together so, there was something they did not get."

"That is precisely the thing," said Miss Craydocke, emphatically. "I
wonder, sometimes," she went on, tenderly, "if whenever God makes a
little empty place in a home, it isn't really on purpose that it
might be filled with one of these,--if people only thought."

"Miss Craydocke," said Hazel, "how did you begin your beehive?"

"I!" said the good lady. "I didn't. It began itself."

"Well, then, how did you _let_ it begin?"

"Ah!"

The tone was admissive, and as if she had said, "_That_ is another
thing!" She could not contradict that she had let it be.

"I'll tell you a queer story," she said, "of what they say they used
to do, in old Roman Catholic times and places, when they wanted to
_keep up_ a beehive that was in any danger of dwindling or growing
unprofitable. I read it somewhere in a book of popular beliefs and
customs about bees and other interesting animals. An old woman once
went