o amuse him. God forgive
me, but I had only one day a week in which to capture him, and I was
very raw at the business.

I was about to say that David opened my eyes to the folly of it, but
really I think this was Irene's doing. Watching her with children I
learned that partial as they are to fun they are moved almost more
profoundly by moral excellence. So fond of babes was this little mother
that she had always room near her for one more, and often have I seen
her in the Gardens, the centre of a dozen mites who gazed awestruck at
her while she told them severely how little ladies and gentlemen behave.
They were children of the well-to-pass, and she was from Drury Lane, but
they believed in her as the greatest of all authorities on little ladies
and gentlemen, and the more they heard of how these romantic creatures
keep themselves tidy and avoid pools and wait till they come to a gate,
the more they admired them, though their faces showed how profoundly
they felt that to be little ladies and gentlemen was not for them. You
can't think what hopeless little faces they were.

Children are not at all like puppies, I have said. But do puppies care
only for play? That wistful look, which the merriest of them sometimes
wear, I wonder whether it means that they would like to hear about the
good puppies?

As you shall see, I invented many stories for David, practising the
telling of them by my fireside as if they were conjuring feats, while
Irene knew only one, but she told it as never has any other fairy-tale
been told in my hearing. It was the prettiest of them all, and was
recited by the heroine.

"Why were the king and queen not at home?" David would ask her
breathlessly.

"I suppose," said Irene, thinking it out, "they was away buying the
victuals."

She always told the story gazing into vacancy, so that David thought it
was really happening somewhere up the Broad Walk, and when she came
to its great moments her little bosom heaved. Never shall I forget the
concentrated scorn with which the prince said to the sisters, "Neither
of you ain't the one what wore the glass slipper."

"And then--and then--and then--," said Irene, not artistically to
increase the suspense, but because it was all so glorious to her.

"Tell me--tell me quick," cried David, though he knew the tale by heart.

"She sits down like," said Irene, trembling in second-sight, "and she
tries on the glass slipper, and it fits her to a T, and then th