ith their own children. And God had granted this unspeakable gift to
her! Was it real? Would it last? Or was she only dreaming? Once it
vaguely passed through her mind that she would not be sure of the
reality of the whole thing until she had seen Ellen. If she could talk
with Ellen about it, tell her what she was going to do, show her the
children, and then come back and find it all the same, it would last.
But somehow she shrank unspeakably from seeing Ellen. She could not
get away from the feeling that Ellen would dispel it all; that
someway, somehow, she would succeed in breaking up all the bright
plans and scattering them like soap-bubbles in the wind.

Nevertheless, it was a very beautiful illusion, if illusion it was;
and one to be prolonged as late as possible.

She was horrified when at last she heard the rebuking strokes of the
town clock, ten! eleven! _twelve!_

She started to her feet ashamed.

And even then they would not let her go to bed at once. She must turn
out the lights, and sit in the hall between their rooms as she did
long ago, and tell the story of "The Little Rid Hin" just as she had
told it night after night when they were children.

It was characteristic of the unfailing youth of the woman that she
entered into the play with zest. Attired in a long kimono, with her
beautiful white hair in two long silver braids down over her
shoulders, she sat in the dark and told the story with the same vivid
language; and then she stole on tiptoe first to the sister's bedside,
to tuck her in and kiss her softly, and then to the brother's; and at
each bedside a young, strong arm reached out and drew her face down,
whispering "Good-night" with a kiss and "I love you, Cloudy Jewel," in
tender, thrilling tones.

The two big children were asleep at last, and Julia Cloud stole to her
own bed to lie in a tumult of wonder and joy, and finally sink into a
light slumber, wherein she dreamed that she had fallen heir to a
rose-garden, and all the roses were alive and could talk; until Ellen
came driving up in her Ford and ran right over them, crushing them
down and cutting their heads off with a long, sharp whip she carried
that somehow turned out to be made of words strung together with
biting sarcasm.

She awoke in the broad morning sunlight to find both children done up
in bath-robes and slippers, sitting one each side of her on the bed,
laughing at her and tickling her chin with a feather from the seam of
t