after all, she said, it was only cowards who ran away; [Pg 5]brave people did not run away, but faced their trials and made the best of them.

[Pg 5]

“And oh, Cecil,” she added, smiling at me, though the smile was a little tremulous, “We will be brave, won’t we, and never, never run away?”

I promised, with my head against her shoulder, but I must confess that, at the moment, I felt anything but brave.

There was soon, no doubt, another reason why she should wish to run away, and why she needed all her courage and forbearance to keep from doing so; for not only was her Prince vanished, but she was a queen dethroned.

From the moment of her arrival, grandaunt assumed charge of things; the house and everything therein contained were completely under her iron sway, and we bowed to her as humbly as did the serfs of the Middle Ages to their feudal lord, who held the right of justice high and low.

Dick and I were both too young, of course, to understand fully the great blow which had befallen us in father’s death. Dick was eight and I was six, and we had both grown up from babyhood with that blind reliance upon a benevolent and protecting Providence, characteristic of birds [Pg 6]and children. We had no thought of danger—no knowledge of it. Now that the bolt had fallen, we were absorbed in a sense of personal loss; we knew that we should no longer find father in that long room under the eaves, with its great north light, and its queer costumes hanging against the walls, and its tall easel and its pleasant, pungent smell of paint. Once or twice we had tiptoed up the stairs in the hope that, after all, he might be there—but he never was—only mother, sitting in the old, armless chair before the easel, the tears streaming down her cheeks, as she gazed at the half-finished painting upon it. I shall never forget how she caught us up and strained us to her—but there. The Prince had left his Kingdom, and the place was fairyland no longer—only a bleak and lonely attic which gave one the shivers to enter. Its dear spirit had fled, and its sweetness.

[Pg 6]

I have only to close my eyes to see Grandaunt Nelson sitting at the table-head, with mother at the foot, and Dick and me opposite each other midway on either side. Mother had been crushed by the suddenness of her loss, and drooped for a time like a blighted flower; but grandaunt was erect and virile—uncrushable, I verily believe, [Pg 

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