An unlooked for guest, involving new curtains for the guest-room, did not prevent Elizabeth from the conscientious discharge of her maternal duties. She resolved for once to play the stern part of Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did.

Richard was playing with his blocks with perfect equanimity, a large black and blue lump on his forehead marking his recent experience with the undeviating law of gravitation. He gave utterance to a little yelp of protest as his mother took him up in her lap with a firm hand.

"You know, Richard," she said solemnly, "that mother has told you ever so many times that you must not put your hand into the aquarium where the pretty gold-fish live. Why didn't you mind mother?"

There being a new link established in the chain of associations connected with the gold-fish, the infant put his fat hand to the lump on his forehead and gazed unwinkingly at his parent.

"I like to sp'ash water," he announced conclusively. "I like bafs."

Elizabeth reflected that in a rudimentary way her child was endeavouring to make clear his motives, and even to place them on a praiseworthy basis. A feeling of pride in the distinguished intelligence of her children swelled within her; she suppressed it as she went on with an impressive show of maternal authority.

"Yes, Richard; mother knows you like to take your bath; but we don't take baths with the gold-fish. Besides, you got your nice clean dress all wet, and made poor mother a great deal of trouble. Then, when mother told you to stay in your crib, you disobeyed again and got a dreadful bump."

The infant appeared to ponder these indubitable statements for a space. Then he broke into an ingratiating smile. "I was tomin' to tell mudzer I was a dood boy," he said earnestly. "Zen I bumped my head."

The violet depths of his eyes under their upturned lashes were altogether adorable; so was his pink mouth, half parted and curved exquisitely like the petals of a flower. Elizabeth's arms closed round her treasure; her lips brushed the warm rose of his cheeks.

"Darling!" she murmured, for the moment quite losing sight of the fact that she was engaged in the difficult task of moral suasion. Elizabeth was almost guiltily open to the appeal of infantile beauty as opposed to the stern demands of discipline. The sight of a dimple, appearing and disappearing in a soft cheek, the quiver of baby lips; the irresistible twinkle of dawning humour in baby eyes were enough to distract her mind from any number of infantile peccadillos, and it is to be feared that the exceedingly intelligent Brewster children had become aware of it.

"I am a dood boy," repeated Richard, with a bewitching glance at his parent. Then his chin quivered pathetically and he raised his hand to his head and peered out from under his pink palm. "I bumped my head on ze floor."

Elizabeth hardened her heart against these multiplied fascinations. "You disobeyed mother twice," she said sternly. "I shall have to do something to make you remember not to touch the gold-fish again."

She looked about her somewhat uncertainly as if in search of a suitable yet entirely safe idea. "I think," she said solemnly, "that I shall tie you to the arm of this big chair for—ten minutes!"

The corners of Richard's pink mouth suddenly drooped as this terrible sentence of the maternal court was pronounced.

"I am a dood boy, mudzer," he quavered. "I bumped my head on ze floor an' I cwied!"

Two dimpled arms were thrown about Elizabeth's neck and a curly head burrowed passionately into her bosom. "I love 'oo, mudzer; I am a dood boy!"

"I know you mean to be good, darling!" exclaimed Elizabeth, her heart melting within her; "but you do forget so often. Mother wants to help you to remember."

But the intelligent infant had given himself up to an unpremeditated luxury of grief, and Elizabeth found herself in the unexpected position of a suppliant consoler. She begged her child to stop crying; she kissed the black and blue spot on his forehead and soothed him with soft murmurs and gentle caresses, and when finally he had sobbed himself to sleep in her arms, she bestowed the moist rosy little bundle on the couch, covering him warmly; then, with a parting pat and cuddle, sat down to her belated work on the spare-room curtains, feeling that she had been very severe indeed with her youngest child.

Richard was still rosily asleep and Elizabeth was hurriedly attaching the ruffles to one of the improvised curtains when Celia, with two buttons off her frock in the back and a broad streak of stove-blacking across her honest red face, announced "one nize lady."

Elizabeth sprang to her feet in sudden consternation at sight of the small square of white pasteboard with which Celia prefaced her announcement.

Mrs. J. Mortimer Van Duser was a distant relative of Samuel Brewster's, and it pleased her to be kind, in an imposing and majestic manner—entirely suited to her own imposing and majestic person—to his "little family," as she invariably termed it. Elizabeth had assured her husband on more than one occasion that she did not feel the least embarrassment in that august presence; but her heart still flew to her mouth at sight of the entirely correct equipage from Beacon Street, and she always found herself drawing a long breath of unconfessed relief when it rolled away after one of Mrs. Van Duser's infrequent visits.

When presently Mrs. Van Duser, large, bland and encased in broadcloth and sables, entered, she bestowed a gracious kiss upon Elizabeth's cheek, and seated herself in a straight-backed chair with the effect of a magistrate about to administer justice.

"I trust you received the little brochure I mailed you last week," was her initial remark, accompanied by a searching glance at Elizabeth's agitated face. "I refer to 'Anthropological investigations on one thousand children, white and coloured.' I looked it over most carefully and marked the passages I deemed particularly helpful and suggestive."

"Thank you, Mrs. Van Duser," faltered Elizabeth, "I did get the book, and I—was intending to write to you to-day to thank you for it."

"Have you read it?" inquired Mrs. Van Duser pointedly.

"I—looked it over, and—it appeared very——"

Mrs. Van Duser's steadfast gaze appeared to demand the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Elizabeth's eyes fell before it. "It was very good of you to—to think of me," she said.

"I think of you not infrequently," was the lady's gracious rejoinder, "and more particularly of your children, who are, of course, distantly related to myself. I cannot urge too strongly, or too often, the need of a scientific study of infancy and childhood as causally related to the proper functional development of your offspring."

"I am sure it is most kind of you," murmured Elizabeth, striving to kindle an appreciative glow. "But—I have so little time."

"You have all the time there is, my dear Elizabeth," chanted Mrs. Van Duser, in her justly celebrated platform tone; "and you should strive above all things to distinguish what is significant and essential from what is trivial and accidental." Her voice sank to a heart-searching contralto, as she added, "I have observed that you have time to sew trimming on your child's frock. What is trimming as compared with the demands of the springing intellect?"

Elizabeth blushed guiltily and murmured something unintelligible.

"Did you study the passages marked in 'Nascent Stages and their Significance,' which I sent you the week before?—particularly those on 'The feelings and their expression'?" asked Mrs. Van Duser, after a weighty pause.

Elizabeth drew a deep breath. "I—found it not altogether easy to understand," she said guilefully.

"For an untrained mind—no," agreed Mrs. Van Duser blandly. "I feared as much, and I have come this morning because I wished to go over with you somewhat exhaustively the points mentioned by the author, in order to compare them with your own more practical experience. I am about to present a paper before the Ontological Club on 'The Emotive States as factors in the education of The Child,' which I feel sure should prove invaluable to all thoughtful parents. I had intended," she added, with a mordant emphasis on the past tense of the verb, "to dedicate the brochure to you upon publication."

At this point in the conversation, and before Elizabeth had time to express her blended contrition, gratitude and appreciation, two hurriedly slammed doors and the clatter of small feet in the passage announced the return of the children from school.

Mrs. Van Duser's severe expression relaxed perceptibly. "How very fortunate," she observed. "I was hoping for an opportunity of studying certain phenomena at first hand. You know, my dear, I so seldom see children."

Elizabeth's tender heart was touched by the unconscious wistfulness in the older woman's eyes. But she sighed at sight of the gilt-edged memorandum book in the hands of her guest. She was familiar with the exhaustive methods employed by Mrs. Van Duser in the pursuit of knowledge.

"You will not, I hope, interrupt any normal procedure," that lady was saying in a sprightly tone, calculated to restore the depressed spirits of the younger matron to their usual level. "I should like—if I may—to observe the children at their luncheon, since the sense stimuli connected with the taking of food is exceedingly instructive as related to the cosmic consciousness."

"I shall be very happy to have you lunch with us," faltered Elizabeth, her thoughts busying themselves with a futile review of the contents of her larder. Then the door flew open and Carroll and Doris dashed in, breathless and eager, to precipitate their small persons upon their mother's lap.

"I was a nawful good girl in kindergarten, mother!" announced Doris, dancing with impatience, "an' I didn't get run over, or anythin'. When can I go to the store an' spend all my money, mother? When? Can I go now?"

"Doris, dear; don't you see Mrs. Van Duser? and Carroll——"

But the boy had already advanced politely, and was standing before the magisterial presence with a funny little air of resignation to the inevitable which forced a smile to his mother's serious lips.

"Can you tell me, my boy, why you experience pleasure at the sight of your mother?" demanded Mrs. Van Duser, gazing searchingly at the child through her gold-mounted lorgnettes.

"I—like my mother, better'n any body else," replied the boy, with a worried pucker of his smooth forehead.

"Like?" echoed his inquisitor, looking up from a hurriedly pencilled note. "And what, pray, do you mean by 'like'?"

"I mean I—love her, because she's the bestest person I know."

"Is it because she gives you food when you are hungry that you love your parent? Or can you give me another reason?" continued Mrs. Van Duser, ignoring the comprehensive statement advanced by the boy.

Carroll glanced doubtfully after his mother, as she hastily withdrew to look after the luncheon table.

"I—don't know," he stammered. "I guess I like her when I'm hungry just the same."

"C., aged eight years, unable to enumerate reasons for fondness of parent," wrote Mrs. Van Duser, with every appearance of satisfaction. "The reasoning faculties apparently dormant at this age."

"What are you most afraid of?" was her next question, accompanied by an ingratiating smile, calculated to disarm youthful timidity.

At this moment Richard, who had been peacefully asleep on the sofa, awoke, and becoming slowly aware of the majestic presence at his side, set up a doleful cry.

Whereupon Mrs. Van Duser noted neatly that "an unexpected visual impression evidently caused anxiety, without any assignable reason, in the normal infant R."

And when the normal infant scrambled down from the couch and retreated kitchenward under the careful supervision of his older brother, she observed further that "the dawning of the paternal instinct of protection was observable in the child C."

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