heard someone coming up the stairs and saw grandaunt’s gray head and gaunt figure rising before me. I shrank back into the shadow of a door, for I did not wish her to see me; but she did see me, and gave a shriek so shrill and piercing that it seemed to stab me.

[Pg 9]

“What is it?” cried mother’s voice, and she came running up the stair.

Grandaunt, who was clutching the stair-rail convulsively, did not answer, only pointed a shaking finger in my direction.

Mother hurried forward, and an instant later was bending over me—a little white crouching figure in the semi-darkness.

“Why, it’s Cecil!” she said. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I—I wanted a drink,” I sobbed, my face hidden in mother’s bosom. “I was so thirsty.”

“There, there,” and she patted me gently. “Don’t cry. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sure Aunt Nelson will say so too.”

But grandaunt had stalked stiffly away to her room.

[Pg 10]

[Pg 10]

The incident did not serve to raise me in her esteem; and no doubt I quite unconsciously did many other things to annoy her—which is, in itself, an annoyance. It was not her fault, of course; she had never been used to children and did not understand them. I think she regarded them much as she did dogs and cats—nuisances, to be permitted in the house as little as possible, and then only in the kitchen. Her pet abhorrence, the annoyance which she could endure least of all, seemed to be the clatter of Dick’s shoes and mine over the floor and up the stairs. More than once I thought of the front gate and liberty; but I no longer dared make a dash for freedom, for I knew that I could never succeed in hiding from the piercing gaze of those glittering glasses. She would have me back in a trice and then, “Off with her head!”

Grandaunt devoted a day or two to studying us, much as she might have studied a rare and curious species of insect; turning us this way and that, with no thought that we could object, or caring if we did. Then, having made up her mind, she called a family council, and formally announced her intentions with regard to us.

“Now, Clara,” she said to mother, “you 

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