lore the spiritual fastnesses of a
sensitive and alien orphan. Beulah tried earnestly to get some
perspective on the child's point of view, but she could not. The fact
that she was torturing the child would have been outside of the limits
of her comprehension. She searched her mind for some immediate
application of the methods of Madame Montessori, and produced a lump
of modeling clay.

"You don't really have to do anything, Eleanor," she said kindly. "I
don't want you to make an effort to please me, only to be happy
yourself. Why don't you try and see what you can do with this modeling
clay? Just try making it up into mud pies, or anything."

"Mud pies?"

"Let the child teach himself the significance of contour, and the use
of his hands, by fashioning the clay into rudimentary forms of
beauty." That was the theory.

"Yes, dear, mud pies, if you wish to."

Whereupon Eleanor, conscientiously and miserably, turned out a neat
half-dozen skilful, miniature models of the New England deep dish
apple-pie, pricked and pinched to a nicety.

Beulah, with a vision related to the nebulous stages of a study by
Rodin, was somewhat disconcerted with this result, but she brightened
as she thought at least she had discovered a natural tendency in the
child that she could help her develop.

"Do you like to cook, Eleanor?" she asked.

In the child's mind there rose the picture of her grim apprenticeship
on Cape Cod. She could see the querulous invalid in the sick chair,
her face distorted with pain and impatience; she could feel the sticky
dough in her fingers, and the heat from the stove rising round her.

"I hate cooking," she said, with the first hint of passion she had
shown in her relation to her new friends.

The day dragged on wearily. Beulah took her to walk on the Drive, but
as far as she was able to determine the child saw nothing of her
surroundings. The crowds of trimly dressed people, the nursemaids and
babies, the swift slim outlines of the whizzing motors, even the
battleships lying so suggestively quiescent on the river before
them--all the spectacular, vivid panorama of afternoon on Riverside
Drive--seemed absolutely without interest or savor to the child.
Beulah's despair and chagrin were increasing almost as rapidly as
Eleanor's.

Late in the afternoon Beulah suggested a nap. "I'll sit here and read
for a few minutes," she said, as she tucked Eleanor under the covers.
Then, since she was quite desperate f