tanding on a brick, flanked the entrance. It looked
splendid, like an Assyrian temple in the pictures Helen had shown him.
But the bricks, wherever he built with them alone, looked mean, and like
factories or workhouses. Bricks alone always do.

Philip explored again. He found the library. He made several journeys.
He brought up twenty-seven volumes bound in white vellum with marbled
boards, a set of Shakespeare, ten volumes in green morocco. These made
pillars and cloisters, dark, mysterious, and attractive. More Noah's Ark
animals added an Egyptian-looking finish to the building.

'Lor', ain't it pretty!' said the parlour-maid, who came to call him to
tea. 'You are clever with your fingers, Master Philip, I will say that
for you. But you'll catch it, taking all them things.'

'That grey nurse said I might,' said Philip, 'and it doesn't hurt things
building with them. My sister and I always did it at home,' he added,
looking confidingly at the parlour-maid. She had praised his building.
And it was the first time he had mentioned his sister to any one in that
house.

'Well, it's as good as a peep-show,' said the parlour-maid; 'it's just
like them picture post-cards my brother in India sends me. All them
pillars and domes and things--and the animals too. I don't know how you
fare to think of such things, that I don't.'

[Illustration: 'Lor', ain't it pretty!' said the parlour-maid.]

Praise is sweet. He slipped his hand into that of the parlour-maid as
they went down the wide stairs to the hall, where tea awaited him--a
very little tray on a very big, dark table.

'He's not half a bad child,' said Susan at her tea in the servants'
quarters. 'That nurse frightened him out of his little wits with her
prim ways, you may depend. He's civil enough if you speak him civil.'

'But Miss Lucy didn't frighten him, I suppose,' said the cook; 'and look
how he behaved to her.'

'Well, he's quiet enough, anyhow. You don't hear a breath of him from
morning till night,' said the upper housemaid; 'seems silly-like to me.'

'You slip in and look what he's been building, that's all,' Susan told
them. 'You won't call him silly then. India an' pagodas ain't in it.'

They did slip in, all of them, when Philip had gone to bed. The building
had progressed, though it was not finished.

'I shan't touch a thing,' said Susan. 'Let him have it to play with
to-morrow. We'll clear it all away before that nurse comes back with her
caps and