And Uncle Titus walked off, so that nobody could tell whether he liked it or not.

Nobody told him anything about the Scarups.  But do you suppose he didn’t know?  Uncle Titus Oldways was as sharp as he was blunt.

“I guess I know, mother,” said Hazel, a little while after this, one day, “how people write stories.”

“Well?” asked her mother, looking up, ready to be amused with Hazel’s deep discovery.

“If they can just begin with one thing, you see, that makes the next one.  It can’t help it, hardly.  Just as it does with us.  What made me think of it was, that it seemed to me there was another little piece of our beehive story all ready to put on; and if we went and did it,—­I wonder if you wouldn’t, mother?  It fits exactly.”

“Let me see.”

“That little lame Sulie at Miss Craydocke’s Home, that we like so much.  Nobody adopts her away, because she is lame; her legs are no use at all, you know, and she just sits all curled up in that great round chair that Mrs. Geoffrey gave her, and sews patchwork, and makes paper dolls.  And when she drops her scissors, or her thread, somebody has to come and pick it up.  She wants waiting on; she just wants a little lightning-bug, like Vash, to run round for her all the time.  And we don’t, you see; and we’ve got Vash!  And Vash—­likes paper dolls.”

Hazel completed the circle of her argument with great triumph.

“An extra piece of bread to finish your too much butter,” said Diana.

“Yes.  Doesn’t it just make out?” said Hazel, abating not a jot of her triumph, and taking things literally, as nobody could do better than she, upon occasion, for all her fancy and intuition.

“I wonder what Uncle Oldways would say to that,” said Diana.

“He’d say ‘Faugh, faugh!’ But he doesn’t mean faugh, faugh, half the time.  If he does, he doesn’t stick to it.  Mother,” she asked rather suddenly, “do you think Uncle Oldways feels as if we oughtn’t to do—­other things—­with his money?”

“What other things?”

“Why, these others.  Vash, and Sulie, perhaps.  Wouldn’t he like it if we turned his house into a Beehive?”

“It isn’t his house,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley, “He has given it to me.”

“Well,—­do you feel ‘obligated,’ as Luclarion says?’

“In a certain degree,—­yes.  I feel bound to consider his comfort and wishes, as far as regards his enjoyment with us, and fulfilling what he reasonably looked for when he brought us here.”

“Would that interfere?”

“Suppose you ask him, Hazel?”

“Well, I could do that.”

“Hazel wouldn’t mind doing anything!” said Diana, who, to tell the truth was a little afraid of Uncle Titus, and who dreaded of all things, being snubbed.

“Only,” said Hazel, to whom something else had just occurred, “wouldn’t he think—­wouldn’t it be—­your business?”