maid-servant to do all the work, so no one in
Number 29 Albert Street had any idle moments on their hands. The small
house was always full of noise and hurry and bustle--a baby crying or a
boy rushing up and down stairs, the street-door slamming, or "Iris!"
shouted in shrill impatient voices. It was hard to be for ever called
upon to do something for someone else, to have no time of your very own,
to be everyone's servant--to be only thirteen years old, and yet to have
so very few holidays. Iris had come to feel this more and more strongly
lately, to long for ease and pleasure and idleness, and to leave off
serving other people. These moods increased every day. She was tired
of being busy, tired of the hurry and worry of Albert Street, she was
tired of doing things for others; she should like to go quite away into
the country a long way off and do just as she pleased all day. And
because she kept these discontented fancies quite to herself they grew
very strong, and at last took hold of her mind altogether. She began to
feel that there never was such a hard-worked injured person as Iris
Graham, or such a dull, unamusing life as hers. Even the sound of her
little sisters' voices as they said the verses they were learning about
"the busy bee" provoked her beyond endurance. "I hate bees and I hate
being busy!" she said to herself.

One warm morning in May she sat, with these thoughts in her mind and a
basket of work by her side, in a little room at the back of the house
called the "Boys' Room." Her mother was lying down upstairs with a bad
nervous headache, and Iris had succeeded with great difficulty in
keeping the house quiet for the last hour. The only other person in the
room was her brother Max, mumbling over his lessons for the next day
half aloud, and presently he threw his book across the table to her.

"Just hear me this," he said.

Iris propped the book up against her basket and went on darning.

"Go on," she said.

"Now came still evening on," began Max, with his eyes fixed on the
ceiling and his fingers drumming on the table, "and twilight grey had in
her sober livery all things clad--all things clad--oh, bother! What's
the next?"

Iris prompted him, and he halted lamely through his task with many a
sigh and groan.

"Why couldn't Milton make his things rhyme?" he said impatiently as his
sister returned the book. "I never knew such rotten stuff to learn as
_Paradise Lost_."

"You don't ha