owly, was
fresh, careless, light-hearted enough. Going to and fro in the room,
now carrying one of the children, she sang it to sleep with no doleful
ditty, such as young women fresh from boarding-school affect, but with
a ringing, cheery song. You might be sure that Baby would wake laughing
to-morrow morning after it. He could see her shadow pass and repass the
windows; she would be out presently; she was used to come out always
after the hot day's flurry,--to say her prayers, he believed; and he
chose to see her there in the dark and coolness to bid her good-bye. He
waited, not patiently.

Grey, trotting up and down, holding by the chubby legs and wriggling
arms of Master Pen, sang herself out of breath with "Roy's Wife," and
stopped short.

"I'm sure, Pen, I don't know what to do with you,"--half ready to cry.

"'Dixie,' now, Sis."

Pen was three years old, but he was the baby when his mother died; so
Sis walked him to sleep every night: all tender memories of her who
was gone clinging about the little fat lump of mischief in his white
night-gown. A wiry voice spoke out of some corner,--

"Yer 'd hev a thumpin' good warmin', Mars' Penrose, ef ole Oth hed his
will o' yer! It 'ud be a special 'pensation ob de Lord fur dat chile!"

Pen prospected his sister's face with the corner of one blue eye. There
was a line about the freckled cheeks and baby-mouth of "Sis" that
sometimes agreed with Oth on the subject of dispensations, but it was
not there to-night.

"No, no, uncle. Not the last thing before he goes to bed. I always try,
myself, to see something bright and pretty for the last thing, and then
shut my eyes, quick,--just as Pen will do now: quick! there's my sonny
boy!"

Nobody ever called Grey Gurney pretty; but Pen took an immense delight
in her now; shook and kicked her for his pony, but could not make her
step less firm or light; thrust his hands about her white throat; pulled
the fine reddish hair down; put his dumpling face to hers. A thin,
uncertain face, but Pen knew nothing of that; he did know, though, that
the skin was fresh and dewy as his own, the soft lips very ready for
kisses, and the pale hazel eyes just as straightforward-looking as a
baby's. Children and dogs believe in women like Grey Gurney. Finally,
from pure exhaustion, Pen cuddled up and went to sleep.

It was a long, narrow room where Grey and the children were, covered
with rag-carpet, (she and the boys and old Oth had made the ba