at home, and when mothers and nurses are more
thankful than any one _not_ a mother or nurse can imagine, to have to
do with cheerful contented little people, who are "good at amusing
themselves," and unselfish enough not to worry every one about them
because it is a rainy day.

CHAPTER IX.

A PEACOCK'S FEATHER AND A KISS.

"We tried to quarrel yesterday.
Ah!... kiss the memory away."

In Ted's pleasant home there was a queer little room used for nothing in
particular. It was a very little room, hardly worthy indeed of the name,
but it had, like some small men who have very big minds, a large window
with a most charming view. I think it was partly this which made Ted
take such a fancy to this queer little room in the first place--he used
to stand at the window when they first came to the house and gaze out at
the stretch of sloping fields, with peeps here and there of the blue
river fringed with splendid trees, and farther off still the distant
hills fading away into the mysterious cloudiness, the sight of which
always gave him a strange feeling as if he would like to cry--Ted used
to gaze out of this window for ever so long at a time, till somehow the
little room came to be associated with him, and the rest of the family
got into the way of speaking of it as his. And gradually an idea took
shape in his mind which he consulted his mother about, and which she was
quite pleased to agree to. Might he have this little room for his
museum? That was Ted's idea, and oh how eagerly his blue eyes looked up
into his mother's face for her reply, and how the light danced in them
with pleasure when she said "yes."

There were shelves in the little room--shelves not too high up, some of
them at least, for Ted to arrange his curiosities on, without having to
climb on to a chair, and even Cissy, when she was trusted as a great
treat to dust some of the treasures, could manage nicely with just a
footstool. It would be impossible to tell you half the pleasure Ted got
out of his museum. It was to him a sort of visible history of his simple
happy life, for nowhere did he go without bringing back with him some
curious stone or shell, or bird's feather, or uncommon leaf even, to be
placed in his collection, both as a remembrance of his visit and as a
thing of interest in itself.

There were specimens of cotton in its different stages, of wool too,
from a soft bit of fluff which Ted had picked off a Welsh bramble, to a
sq