't kiss him good night, and you don't care if he runs
away, and he hasn't a friend in the world but me and the monkey. He
feels awful bad about having to leave home. Oh, daddy dear, _please_
tell him he can stay!"

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT DAGO TOLD THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON SUNDAY.

As soon as Elsie was put back to bed, Doctor Tremont came into the
room where I was still trying to comfort Phil, for I had skipped back
to him when they started up the stairs. Stirring the fire in the grate
until it blazed brightly, he turned to look at Phil. There was a long
silence; then he said, "Phil, come here, my boy. Come and sit on my
knee by the fire. I want to talk to you awhile."

His voice was so kind and gentle that it seemed to me nobody could
have been afraid of him then, but Phil climbed out of bed very slowly,
as if he did not want to obey. Wrapping him in a warm, fleecy blanket,
the doctor drew him over to a big rocking-chair in front of the fire,
and sat down with him on his knee. I crawled back to my cushion on the
hearth.

For a little while there was nothing said. The old chair crooned a
comforting lullaby of _creakity-creak_, _creakity-creak_, as the
doctor rocked back and forth, with the boy's curly head on his
shoulder. At last he said: "You think that I am unkind, Phil, because
I want to send your pet away, and cruel because I punished you for
speaking rudely to your Aunt Patricia. Now, I am going to tell you her
story, and maybe you will understand her better. The truth is, you do
not understand your Aunt Patricia, or why many of the little things
you do should annoy her. I want you to put yourself in her place as
near as you can, and see how differently you will look at things from
her standpoint.

"She was the only child in a houseful of grown people, and growing up
among prim elderly persons made her orderly and exact in everything
she did. When she was a very little girl she was sent to a strict,
old-fashioned school every morning, where she learned to work samplers
as well as to read and spell. They used to tell that, at the age of
seven, she came home one day with two prizes which she had taken. One
was for scholarship, and one was for neatness in her needlework.
When she brought them home, her grandmother (that is your
great-great-grandmother, you know) praised her for the first; but her
grandfather (the one whose portrait Stuart shot) said: 'Nay, it is for
the neatness that the little lass should be