rug, and the brush hung
idly in her fingers. The voice of the storyteller went on and drew her
with it into winding grottos under the sea, glowing with soft, clear
blue light, and paved with pure golden sands. Strange sea flowers and
grasses waved about her, and far away faint singing and music echoed.

The hearth brush fell from the work-roughened hand, and Lavinia Herbert
looked round.

"That girl has been listening," she said.

The culprit snatched up her brush, and scrambled to her feet. She
caught at the coal box and simply scuttled out of the room like a
frightened rabbit.

Sara felt rather hot-tempered.

"I knew she was listening," she said. "Why shouldn't she?"

Lavinia tossed her head with great elegance.

"Well," she remarked, "I do not know whether your mamma would like you
to tell stories to servant girls, but I know MY mamma wouldn't like ME
to do it."

"My mamma!" said Sara, looking odd. "I don't believe she would mind in
the least. She knows that stories belong to everybody."

"I thought," retorted Lavinia, in severe recollection, "that your mamma
was dead. How can she know things?"

"Do you think she DOESN'T know things?" said Sara, in her stern little
voice. Sometimes she had a rather stern little voice.

"Sara's mamma knows everything," piped in Lottie. "So does my
mamma--'cept Sara is my mamma at Miss Minchin's--my other one knows
everything. The streets are shining, and there are fields and fields
of lilies, and everybody gathers them. Sara tells me when she puts me
to bed."

"You wicked thing," said Lavinia, turning on Sara; "making fairy
stories about heaven."

"There are much more splendid stories in Revelation," returned Sara.
"Just look and see! How do you know mine are fairy stories? But I can
tell you"--with a fine bit of unheavenly temper--"you will never find
out whether they are or not if you're not kinder to people than you are
now. Come along, Lottie." And she marched out of the room, rather
hoping that she might see the little servant again somewhere, but she
found no trace of her when she got into the hall.

"Who is that little girl who makes the fires?" she asked Mariette that
night.

Mariette broke forth into a flow of description.

Ah, indeed, Mademoiselle Sara might well ask. She was a forlorn little
thing who had just taken the place of scullery maid--though, as to
being scullery maid, she was everything else besides. She blacked boots
and grates