The Mistress of the house lay among her pillows, her brows drawn into the nearest semblance of a frown that her gentle countenance could assume. Nurse—bearing a tiny, moving bundle of muslin and flannel—and the father were at the bedside.

The father's forehead wore an unmistakable frown. It was evident that something displeased him, but who would have dreamed that it was the gurgling mite in the flannel blanket? Yet he pointed in that direction as he said,—

"Take him away. He has made trouble enough."

"H'indeed, Mr. Walcott," cried nurse, "'E's the best baby h'I' ave ever seen h'in this 'ouse! 'E's never cried before."

"Take him away!" repeated the father, still frowning. "He may be the best baby in the world—a future President of the United States, even,—but he can't stay in this room another minute. Do you understand?"

"Certainly, sir," nurse replied somewhat tartly.

Nurse thought the father a great bear. Of course she could not tell him so, but she could and she did show him that an imported English nurse chooses her own rate of speed. She moved slowly toward the door, holding her head with its imposing white cap well up in the air, and looking at Baby as though he were a Crown Prince, instead of the youngest nursling in an American flock of five. While the door was open for nurse and her precious burden to pass through, sounds of boisterous mirth floated into the quiet chamber. It was only the twins, Gay and May, and little Ned—Alice was in the country—at play in the nursery, but one would have said that half the children in New York city were shouting together. The invalid tried to stifle a sigh which did not escape the father's ear.

"Those torments must go, Elinor!" he exclaimed. "That is the only way to ensure your recovery."

"Oh, Edward, how can I live without my dear little ones!" murmured the gentle mother.

Mr. Walcott took his wife's transparent hands in his own and caressed them tenderly. "Do you want our children's mother to have nerves as much out of tune as a cracked bell?" said he.

"No."

"Then they must go to-morrow."

"Not Ned—he is too young to be sent away from me."

"Very well; Ned shall stay—three servants may be able to keep him in order! Now let me see those letters."

Mrs. Walcott drew two letters from beneath her pillow and passed them to her husband. "Read them aloud," said she; "I half-read them."

Mr. Walcott drew from one of the envelopes a single sheet of blue thin paper covered with small precise characters traced in the blackest of ink, with the bluntest of quills. As he moved it a gritty shower fell, showing the writer to be of the old school which prefers sand to blotting paper.

"A characteristic postscript," laughed Mr. Walcott. "Uncle Harold's antipathy to 'a petticoat', as he is fond of calling one of your sex, dear, seems to increase."

"His antipathy is quite out of proportion to our little daughter's half-yard petticoat," responded the Mistress, smiling faintly. "But go on, please, with Auntie's letter."

The second letter was quite unlike the first; it was penned in the most delicate handwriting, on fine white paper, ornamented with a silver crest, and as Mr. Walcott unfolded it a faint odor of that old-fashioned scent, lavender, was shed on the air. "A gentlewoman's letter," one would have said at once.

"It is rather strange, isn't it, Edward, that the aunts will have none of Gay, while the uncle disdains May? It will break their hearts to separate them."

"It is better so, my dear. Doting father that I am I cannot deny that Gay and May make a team that gentle maiden ladies or a quiet old bachelor would find difficult to manage! Shall I go out now and wire our good relatives that they may expect the children to-morrow?"

"Yes," the Mistress replied, with a sigh of resignation. "And send Gay and May to me, please—they will receive their sentence of banishment best from my lips."