As Miss Tripp was putting the finishing touches to a careful toilet the next morning she caught the sound of a whispered dispute in the hall; then small knuckles were cautiously applied to the panel of her chamber door.

"Aunty Evelyn! Aunty Evelyn! are you waked up?"

Miss Tripp had been brooding since daylight over the accumulated problems which appeared to crowd her narrow horizon like so many menacing thunder-caps; but she summoned a faint smile to her lips as she opened the door.

"Why, good-morning, dears!" she cried cheerfully at sight of the two small figures in their gay dressing-gowns and scarlet slippers.

"We want to hear a story, Aunty Evelyn," announced Doris, prancing boldly in, each individual curl on her small head bobbing like coiled wire. "We like stories."

"Come here, pet, and let Aunty brush your curls."

"No; I don't want my curls brushed; I want to hear a story about a be-utiful princess going to seek her fortune."

Miss Tripp suppressed a vague sigh. "I know a poor, forlorn princess who is obliged to go out all alone into the cold world to seek her fortune," she said. "And I'm very much afraid she won't find it."

"Is she young and be-utiful?" asked Doris, with wide-eyed attention. "An' has she got a spangled dress?"

"Dot a spangled dwess?" cooed Richard, like a cheerful little echo.

"No; she's forced to wear a plain black dress in her wanderings, and she isn't beautiful at all. She's not very young either, and ugly lines are beginning to creep about her eyes and across her forehead; and one day, not long ago she found—what do you suppose?"

"A bag of gold?"

"A bag o' dold?" echoed Richard.

"No, dear; this poor, forlorn little princess found three silver hairs growing among the brown ones just over her ear."

Miss Tripp's sweet, drawling voice trembled slightly as she went on with her little fable. "The princess felt so badly that she shed bitter tears when she saw the glitter of those three silver hairs, because she knew that she could never, never catch up with youth any more."

"What youth—the fairy prince?" Doris wanted to know.

And Richard smiled seraphically as he trilled, "Oh, dood! It was 'e pwince!"

"No, darlings; there isn't any prince at all in this story. There was one—once—away back in the beginning of it; but he—went away—to a far country, and he—never came back."

"Did the princess cry?"

"Did her cwy?"

"Yes; she cried till all the brightness went out of her pretty eyes. Then she stopped crying and laughed instead, because—Oh; because crying didn't help a bit."

"You've been crying, Aunty Evelyn!" said Doris suddenly. "Why-e! your eyes are all teary now!"

"I've got a cold; I'm afraid," prevaricated Miss Tripp.

"I don't like that story," objected Doris. "Unless——" and her eyes brightened, "the prince came back. Let him come back, Aunty Evelyn; please let him; it'll spoil the story if he doesn't."

Miss Tripp drew a deep breath. "I—wish he might come back," she said; "but I—I'm afraid he never will, dear; and the poor little princess will have to go on alone till——"

"Till what?" demanded Doris indignantly. "I c'n tell a better story 'an that," she added.

"Tell it, dear."

"Well; the princess went out in her horrid ol' black clo'es an' travelled an' travelled, an' travelled till she was mos' tired out, an' everywhere she went she asked 'where is my prince?' An' at first all the people said, 'We don't know where any prince is.' But the princess jus' made up her mind she would find him; an'—an' bimeby she did—jus' as easy! He was right there all the time; only he was enchanted by an awful bad fairy so she couldn't see him, an' so——"

Doris paused to draw breath, and Richard gravely took up the tale, nodding the while like a gay little china mandarin. "He was 'chanted an' she was 'chanted, an' they bof was 'chanted, an'——"

"Be quiet, Buddy, an' let me tell," interrupted Doris. "She did find him! Course she found him, an'—an' her horrid ol' clo'es was changed to a lovely wedding dress, an'—an'—that's the end of it!"

Miss Tripp laughed. She felt unreasonably cheered by this optimistic finale to her sad little story—which had no ending.

"That would be the beginning of a very cheerful story," she said. "Now Aunty Evelyn must get some breakfast and start out into the cold world."

"Oh! we want you to stay!"

"I'm coming back, dears; yes, indeed; I'll be back this very evening, and then I'll tell you the loveliest story in the world, all about a little goose-girl."

It was a very cold world indeed into which Miss Tripp fared forth that winter morning. But Elizabeth's friendly protests were vain.

"I really must go, dear," Evelyn told her with a firmness quite foreign to her fashionable self. "You don't know—you can't guess how necessary it is for me to find some way of earning money. Mother——" her voice shook a little—"isn't at all well; she never was very strong, and our losses have quite—Why, Elizabeth, you would hardly know mother; she's so changed. She just sits by the window, and—looks out; I can't seem to rouse her to—to do anything."

Remembering the frail, artificial old lady, with her elaborate toilets and her perpetual aura of rice-powder and sachet, Elizabeth thought this exceedingly probable. "Was it so very bad, Evelyn?" she asked hesitatingly. "You know you only told me——"

"We lost nearly everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed last fall," said Evelyn quietly. "I—couldn't seem to believe it at first. Of course we were never rich; but we had always lived very comfortably—you know how pleasant it was in our little apartment, Elizabeth, with our good Marie to do everything for us, and all our friends."

Miss Tripp touched her eyelids delicately with her little lace-edged handkerchief. "I—mustn't cry," she said. "It makes one look so like a fright, and I——. Elizabeth, do you suppose I could get a place to—teach? I do love children so, and they always seem to like me."

"What would you teach?" Elizabeth asked, anxiously sympathetic, yet knowing a little more of the ways of the educational world than did Miss Tripp. "You know, Evelyn,—at least I am told—that nearly every teacher has to be a specialist now. You might study kindergartening," she added more hopefully.

Miss Tripp shook her head. "No; I couldn't do that. It would take too long, and we should have plenty of time to—starve, I fancy, before——. But what nonsense I'm talking! I must start out this minute; I have an appointment at Whitcher's Teacher's Agency this morning. They told me yesterday that a man—a school principal—was coming there to hire a primary teacher. I'm sure I could do that; don't you think I could, Elizabeth?—Just to teach the children how to read and write and do little sums on their slates. I shall say I can anyway."

She waved her hand to her friend as she went bravely away down the snowy street, and Elizabeth turned back to her children, feeling a new and unfamiliar sense of gratitude for the warm home nest, with its three turbulent birdlings.

It was Saturday, and the children could not be dispatched to kindergarten as on other mornings of the week. It was also baking-day, and bread and rolls were in slow process of rising to their appointed size in the chilly kitchen. Elizabeth was frugally looking over the contents of her larder with a view to a "picked-up" luncheon, when she heard a small yet distinct knock on the back door.

She opened it upon Robbie Stanford, dancing with impatience on the snowy step.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Brewster," he began with an ingratiating smile, "I've come over to play with Carroll an' Doris. I c'n stay two hours 'n' maybe three, 'nless my mother comes from down-town before that."

"Oh; isn't your mother at home?" asked Elizabeth, with a dubious glance at the red-cheeked, black-eyed young person, who was already edging smilingly toward the closed door of the dining-room. She had entertained Master Stanford before in the absence of his parents and had learned to dread the occasions of his visits.

"No, ma'am," said Robbie politely. "My mother's gone to have her teeth fixed. The' was a teeny hole in one of 'em, an' the hole ached. Did you ever have holes in your teeth, Mrs. Brewster?"

"Why, yes; I suppose I have," assented Elizabeth doubtfully. "Now, Robbie; I want you to promise me that you will be a good boy this morning, and not get into any mischief; I'm going to be very, very busy, and——"

"I'll be good," responded the young person cheerfully. "I'll be gooder 'an anything. Where's Carroll?"

"He's in the other room; but—wait a minute, dear. You remember the last time you played with Carroll you——"

"Yes, 'm; I 'member. We made an ocean in the bath-room, an' you said——"

"Doris took a bad cold from getting so wet, and Richard almost had the croup."

"I won't do it again," promised the visitor, digging his toes rather shamefacedly under a loosened edge of the linoleum. "I'll jus' look at pictures, 'n'—'n' things like that."

"Very well; I'll take you in where the children are playing. Carroll will be glad to see you; I'm sure," she added, feeling that she had been rather ungracious to her friend's child.

The three young Brewsters greeted their neighbour with a whoop of joy. Master Stanford was blessed with a pleasantly inventive turn of mind, and one could generally depend upon a break in the monotony of the home circle when he appeared.

"What'll we do?" inquired Doris, prancing gaily around the visitor, who gazed about him at the assembled Brewster toys with a somewhat ennuied expression on his small, serious countenance.

"Aw—I don't know; play with dolls, I guess. I promised I'd be good."

"We might play Indian," suggested Carroll hopefully. "Mother lets us take the couch-cover for a tent."

The visitor considered this proposition in Napoleonic silence. "Have your dolls got real hair?" he inquired darkly of Doris.

"Uh-huh; every one of 'em 's got real hair. My new doll 'at I got Christmas 's got lovely long curls. I don't play with her ev'ry day, 'cause mother's 'fraid I'll break her."

"Go an' get her; get all yer dolls."

"Oh—we don't want t' play with dolls," objected Carroll. "Let's build a depot an' have trains a-smashin' int' each other."

"Nope; we'll play Indian," the visitor said firmly. "I'll show you how."

Under his able generalship the sitting-room was presently transformed into the semblance of a rolling prairie, with a settler's wagon in the midst of the landscape in which travelled Richard as husband and father, driving a span of wicker chairs, while Doris, smothering a fine family of long-haired dolls, sat behind.

Elizabeth who paused to glance in at this stage of the proceedings was gratified by a sight of the four happy, earnest little faces, and the apparent innocuousness of the proceedings.

"We're havin' lots of fun, mother; we're playin' wagon!" Doris explained. "These are all my children; an' we're goin' west to live."

"Det-ap!" vociferated Richard, pulling manfully at the red lines decorated with bells, with which he restrained his restive steeds.

"Whoa!" and he applied the gad with spirit. "Dey's doin' fast, mudzer," he shouted.

"That's a nice play!" chanted Elizabeth; "only be careful of the whip, dear." Then she hurried up-stairs intent upon restoring immaculate order to the upper part of her house before luncheon.

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