just
burned it, and the child is asleep in my bed as I write. She will come
to me at once. Punch I cannot quite understand. He is well nourished,
but seems to have been worried into a system of small deceptions which
the woman magnifies into deadly sins. Don't you recollect our own
up-bringing, dear, when the Fear of the Lord was so often the
beginning of falsehood? I shall win Punch to me before long. I am
taking the children away into the country to get them to know me, and,
on the whole, I am content, or shall be when you come home, dear boy,
and then, thank God, we shall be all under one roof again at last!"

* * * * *

Three months later, Punch, no longer Black Sheep, has discovered that
he is the veritable owner of a real, live, lovely Mamma, who is also a
sister, comforter, and friend, and that he must protect her till the
Father comes home. Deception does not suit the part of a protector,
and, when one can do anything without question, where is the use of
deception?

"Mother would be awfully cross if you walked through that ditch," says
Judy, continuing a conversation.

"Mother's never angry," says Punch. "She'd just say, 'You're a little
pagal'; and that's not nice, but I'll show."

Punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the knees. "Mother,
dear," he shouts, "I'm just as dirty as I can pos-sib-ly be!"

"Then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-sib-ly can!" rings out
Mother's clear voice from the house. "And don't be a little pagal!"

"There! Told you so," says Punch. "It's all different now, and we are
just as much Mother's as if she had never gone."

Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the
bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the
world will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn
darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith
was.

V

WEE WILLIE WINKIE

"An officer and a gentleman."

His full name was Percival William Williams, but he picked up the
other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened
titles. His mother's ayah called him Willie-Baba, but as he never paid
the faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom did
not help matters.

His father was the Colonel of the 195th, and as soon as Wee Willie
Winkie was old enough to understand what Military Discipline meant,
Colonel Williams put him under it. Ther