“What can I do, Fina?” poor Leam replied.

She had never learnt to play when she was a child:  she had never built towers and towns, made railway trains and coaches with the sofa and chairs, played at giants through the dark passages and screamed when she was caught.  She had only sat still when mamma was asleep, or when she was awake played on the zambomba, or listened to her when she told her of the things of Spain, and made up stories with her dolls that were less edifying than those of Mother Bunch.  She could scarcely, however, unpack that old box full of waxen puppets, with the one dressed in scarlet and black, with fishbone horns and a worsted tail, and a queer clumped kind of foot made of folds of leather, cleft in the middle, that used to go by the name of “El senor papa.”  What could she do?

“Shall I tell you a story?” she then said in a mild fit of desperation, for story-telling was as little in her way as anything else.

“Yes, yes, tell me a story!” Fina clapped her chubby hands together and climbed up into Leam’s lap.

“What shall it be about—­bears or tigers, or what?” asked Leam dutifully.

“Tell me about mamma, my own mamma, not Aunty Birkett,” said Fina.

Leam shuddered from head to foot.  This was the first time the little girl had mentioned her mother’s name to her.  Indeed, she did not know that she had ever heard of her at all—­ever known that she had had a mother; but the servants had talked, and the child’s curiosity was aroused.  The dead mother is as much a matter of wondering inquiry as the angels and the stars; and Fina’s imagination was beginning to bestir itself on the mysteries of childish life.

“I have nothing to tell you about her,” said Leam, controlling herself, though she still shivered.

“Yes, you have—­everything,” insisted Fina.  “Was mamma pretty?” playing with a corner of her sister’s ribbon.

“People said so,” answered Leam.

“As pretty as Cousin Addy?” she asked.

“About,” said Leam, who thought neither supreme.

“Prettier than you?”

“I don’t know:  how can I tell?” she answered a little impatiently.

The mother’s blood that ran in her, the mother’s mould in which she had been formed, forbade her to put herself below madame in anything; but, as she was neither vain nor conscious, she found Fina’s question difficult to answer.

“Oh,” cried Fina, in a tone of disappointment, “then she could not have been very pretty.”

“I dare say she was, but I do not know,” returned Leam.

“And she died?” continued Fina, yawning in a childishly indifferent manner.

“Yes, she died.”

“Why?  Who killed her?  Did papa?” asked Fina.

Leam’s face was very white:  “No, not papa.”

“Did God?”

“I cannot tell you, Fina,” said Leam, to whom falsehoods were abhorrent and the truth impossible.