could not come, and answered the letter at leisure. It is as
a sister-in-law in relation to the aunt that Diana particularly shines.
This aunt she looks upon as something more than useful, and asks her
to stay at other times than when the children have measles, and
whooping-cough, or the bedroom is to be re-papered. Zerlina perhaps is
unfortunate. She says, "Have you ever noticed how the children always
have something when you come to stay?" Zerlina is quite pretty when she
puts her head on one side. I answer, "Yes, Zerlina, I have noticed it
curiously enough," but I do not say that I suspect that at the very
first sound of a cough, at the very first appearance of a rash, this
aunt is urged to come and stay.

Diana accepts such services; the mother of such creatures as Betty,
Hugh, and Sara is forced to do so by very reason of their existence. But
those services she accepts with generous appreciation; not that an aunt
wants thanks, but being human, pitifully so, even the most professional
of them, she is conscious where they are not expressed, in some form or
other. A smile is enough.

So to Hames I went, in spite of Zerlina's appeal, with treasures deep
down in my box for Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Sara is of all babes in the
world the most fascinating, say sisters-in-law other than Diana what
they will. As a tribute to this fascination, the largest white rabbit,
woolly to a degree undreamed of--at least I hoped so--in Sara's world,
was carefully packed in my box, wrapped cunningly in tissue-paper, and
guarded on all sides by clothing of a soft description. I have known a
chiffon skirt put to strange uses in the interests of Sara.

I found the carriage waiting for me, and was touched to see that Croft,
the old coachman, had come to meet me himself. It is an honor he does
the family with perhaps two or three exceptions. When he comes to meet
me, there is a regular program to be gone through. It varies only in a
very slight degree and begins like this:--

I say, "Well, Croft, it is very nice to see you," and he says, "The same
to you, miss, and many of them." He then begins to "riminize"; the word
is his own. He begins with the auspicious day on which I was born, and
describes how he himself went to fetch the doctor in the dead of the
night. He describes minutely his costume and the part the elements
played on the occasion; they were evidently very much upset. He then
goes on to say how he held me on my first pony, and ta