Y OF SUNNY" _Frontispiece_

"I WISH THOO'D LET ME HELP THOO TO CUT THE
GRASS" _To face page_ 32

"SHE HUNTED ABOUT AMONG THE LEAVES AND
BRANCHES TILL SHE FOUND A LITTLE SILVER KNOB" " 83

"BABY SHOWED, OR TED _THOUGHT_ SHE DID, A QUITE
EXTRAORDINARY LOVE FOR THE BOUQUETS HER LITTLE
BROTHER ARRANGED FOR HER" " 98

"OH DEAR, OH DEAR!" CRIES BEAUTY, JUMPING
UP IN A FRIGHT, "HE'S COMING TO EAT ME" " 133

"THEY WERE NEATLY TACKED ON TO THE FEATHER
CARD, WHICH HAD A VERY FINE EFFECT ON THE
WALL OF THE MUSEUM" " 170

"MASTER TED, VERY WET INDEED, MADE HIS APPEARANCE
WITH ROSY CHEEKS AND A GENERAL LOOK OF
SELF-SATISFACTION" " 194

CHAPTER I.

BABY TED.

"Where did you get those eyes so blue?"
"Out of the sky as I came through."

Christmas week a good many years ago. Not an "old-fashioned" Christmas
this year, for there was no snow or ice; the sky was clear and the air
pure, but yet without the sharp, bracing clearness and purity that
Master Jack Frost brings when he comes to see us in one of his nice,
bright, sunny humours. For he has humours as well as other people--not
only is he fickle in the extreme, but even _black_ sometimes, and he is
then, I can assure you, a most disagreeable visitor. But this Christmas
time he had taken it into his head not to come at all, and the world
looked rather reproachful and disconcerted. The poor, bare December
world--it misses its snow garment, so graciously hiding all imperfections
revealed by the absence of green grass and fluttering leaves; it
misses, too, its winter jewels of icicles and hoar frost. Poor old
world! What a great many Decembers you have jogged through; no wonder
you begin to feel that you need a little dressing up and adorning, like
a beauty no longer as young as she has been. Yet ever-young world, too!
Who, that gazes at March's daffodils and sweet April's primroses, can
believe that the world is growing old? Sometimes one could almost wish
that it would leave off being so exquisitely, so heartlessly young. For
the daffodils nod their golden heads, the primroses smile up through
their leafy nests--year after year, they never fail us. But the
children that loved them so; the little feet that trotted so eagerly
down the lanes, the tiny han