" and "What _do_ you suppose people
are saying?"

There was a long, long time after this when nothing special happened.
The new man continued to come here, and his visits were the only events
in Ariadne's quiet days. Apparently he came to see Ariadne, for he never
went to see Muvver at all, as he used to do in Bellevue. He took Ariadne
out in the back yard as the weather began to get warmer, and showed her
lots of outdoor plays. He was as nice as ever, only a good deal whiter;
and that was odd, for they were now in May, and from playing outdoors
all the time Ariadne herself was as brown as a berry. At least, that was
what Aunt Julia said. Ariadne accepted it with her usual patient
indulgence of grown-ups' mistakes. There was not, of course, a single
berry that was anything but red or black, or at least a sort of blue,
like huckleberries in milk. She and 'Stashie had gone over them, one by
one; they knew.

Uncle Marius remembered to shave himself nowadays. In fact, everything
was more normal. Ariadne began to forget about the exciting time in
Bellevue. Muvver wasn't in bed all the time now, but sat up in a chair
for part of the day and even, if one were ever so quiet, could listen to
accounts of what happened in Ariadne's world and could be told how Aunt
Julia said that 'Stashie was quite a help as second girl if you just
remembered to put away the best china, and that they had had eight new
cooks since Ariadne had been there, but the second _would_ have stayed,
only her mother got sick. The others just left. But Aunt Julia didn't
mind. When there wasn't any cook, if it happened to be 'Stashie's day
off, they all had bread and milk for supper, just as she had, and they
let her set the table, and she could do it ever so well only she forgot
_some_ things, of course, and Uncle Marius never got mad. He just said
he hoped eating bread and milk like her would make him as good as she
was--and she _was_ good--oh, Muvver, she was trying ever so hard to be
good--

"Come, dear," said Aunt Julia, "Mother's getting tired. We'd better go."

It was only after she went away, sometimes only when she lay awake in
her strange big bed, that Ariadne remembered that Muvver never said a
word, but only smoothed her hair and kissed her.

She and the new man used to play out in the old grape-arbor in the back
yard, and it was there, one day in mid-May, that Uncle Marius came
teetering out and called the new man to one side, only Ariadne cou