hadows also over the lives of Alan and Felicia Tremaine. When Willie
was a baby, his nurse accidentally let him fall; and the injury he then
received was so great that, as he grew older, he was never able to walk
properly, but had to punt himself about with a little crutch. This was
a terrible blow to Alan; and became all the greater as time went on,
and Felicia had no other children to share his devotion. Felicia, too,
felt it sorely; but she fretted more over the sorrow it was to her
husband than on her own account.

There was a great friendship between Willie and Elisabeth. Weakness of
any kind always appealed to her, and he, poor child! was weak indeed. So
when Elisabeth was at the Willows and Willie at the Moat House, the two
spent much time together. He never wearied of hearing about the things
that she had pretended when she was a little girl; and she never wearied
of telling him about them.

"And so the people, who lived among the smoke and the furnaces, followed
the pillar of cloud till it led them to the country on the other side of
the hills," said Willie one day, as he and Elisabeth were sitting on the
old rustic seat in the Willows' garden. "I remember; but tell me, what
did they find in the country over there?" And he pointed with his thin
little finger to the blue hills beyond the green valley.

"They found everything that they wanted," replied Elisabeth. "Not the
things that other people thought would be good for them, you know; but
just the dear, foolish, impossible things that they had wanted for
themselves."

"And did the things make them happy?"

"Perfectly happy--much happier than the wise, desirable, sensible things
could have made them."

"I suppose they could all walk without crutches," suggested Willie.

"Of course they could; and they could understand everything without
being told."

"And the other people loved them very much, and were very kind to them,
weren't they?"

"Perhaps; but what made them so happy was that they loved the other
people and were kind to them. As long as they lived here in the smoke
and din and bustle, everybody was so busy looking after his own concerns
that nobody could be bothered with their love. There wasn't room for it,
or time for it. But in the country over the hills there was plenty of
room and plenty of time; in fact, there wasn't any room or any time for
anything else."

"What did they have to eat?" Willie asked.

"Everything that had been too ric