"

"And did zou have nice tea, and cake, Martin?" said Hec.

"Oh yes, dears, very nice. But for all that it cured me of setting down
baskets or anything like that when I had to take them anywhere. For you
see it isn't every dog that would have had the sense of that one."

"And then he _might_ have been a woof," suggested Hoodie. "The picture
says a woof."

"Yes," said Maudie. "But this isn't the picture story, Hoodie. This was
a real story of Martin herself, you know, for there aren't wolfs now."

"Not none?" said Hoodie.

"No, of course not."

Hoodie nodded her head, but made no further remark, and the nursery
party congratulated themselves on the astonishing success of their
endeavours to "put her crying fit out of her head."

This happy state of things lasted nearly all day. Hoodie was really most
agreeable. She was rather more silent than usual, but, for her,
surprisingly amiable.

Martin was delighted.

"Take my word for it, Miss Maudie," she said, "the only way with a child
like her, is to take no notice and talk of something else."

"But we can't always do that way, Martin,"--Maudie was not of a sanguine
temperament,--"sometimes, you know, she's naughty about things that you
_must_ go on talking to her about, till you get her to do them."

"I can't help it, Miss Maudie," said Martin. "Talk or no talk, it's my
belief that no power on earth will get Miss Julian to do what she wants
not to do. And folks can't live always quarrel--quarrelling. She may
improve of herself like, when she gets older, but as she is now, I
really think the less notice she gets the better."

Maudie felt rather puzzled. She was only nine years old herself,
remember, and Hoodie's queer ways were enough to puzzle much wiser heads
than hers.

"I don't think Martin's way would do," she said to herself, "but still I
think there must be _some_ way that would make her gooder if only we
could find it."

The children all went to church in the afternoon. The morning service
was too long for them, their mother sensibly thought, but the afternoon
hour, or hour and a quarter at most, no one, not even wee Hec and Duke,
found too much. And Hoodie was rather fond of going to church. What she
thought of, perched up by herself in her own corner of the pew, no one
ever knew; that she listened, or attempted to listen, to what was going
on, was doubtful in the extreme. But still, as a rule, church had a
soothing effect on her, the quiet and re