Mrs. Ripwinkley and Hazel always struck the same note.  The same delicate instinct moved them both.  Hazel “knew what Desire meant;” her mother did not let it be lost sight of that it was Desire who had led the way in this thought of the children; so that the abrupt beginning—­the little flash out of the cloud—­was quite forgotten presently, in the tone of hearty understanding and genuine interest with which the talk went on; and it was as if all that was generous and mindfully suggestive in it had first and truly come from her.  They unfolded herself for her—­these friendly ones—­as she could not do; out of her bluntness grew a graciousness that lay softly over it; the cloud itself melted away and floated off; and Desire began to sparkle again more lambently.  For she was not one of the kind to be meanly or enviously “put out.”

“It seemed to me there must be a great many spare little corners somewhere, for all these spare little children,” she said, “and that, lumped up together so, there was something they did not get.”

“That is precisely the thing,” said Miss Craydocke, emphatically.  “I wonder, sometimes,” she went on, tenderly, “if whenever God makes a little empty place in a home, it isn’t really on purpose that it might be filled with one of these,—­if people only thought.”

“Miss Craydocke,” said Hazel, “how did you begin your beehive?”

“I!” said the good lady.  “I didn’t.  It began itself.”

“Well, then, how did you let it begin?”

“Ah!”

The tone was admissive, and as if she had said, “That is another thing!” She could not contradict that she had let it be.

“I’ll tell you a queer story,” she said, “of what they say they used to do, in old Roman Catholic times and places, when they wanted to keep up a beehive that was in any danger of dwindling or growing unprofitable.  I read it somewhere in a book of popular beliefs and customs about bees and other interesting animals.  An old woman once went to her friend, and asked her what she did to make her hive so gainful.  And this was what the old wife said; it sounds rather strange to us, but if there is anything irreverent in it, it is the word and not the meaning; ‘I go,’ she said, ’to the priest, and get a little round Godamighty, and put it in the hive, and then all goes well; the bees thrive, and there is plenty of honey; they always come, and stay, and work, when that is there.”

“A little round—­something awful! what did she mean?” asked Mrs. Scherman.

“She meant a consecrated wafer,—­the Sacrament.  We don’t need to put the wafer in; but if we let Him in, you see,—­just say to Him it is his house, to do with as He likes,—­He takes the responsibility, and brings in all the rest.”

Nobody saw, under the knitting of Desire Ledwith’s brows, and the close setting of her eyes, the tenderness with which they suddenly moistened, and the earnestness with which they gleamed.  Nobody knew how she thought to herself inwardly, in the same spasmodic fashion that she used for speech,—­