“The beast’s eyes seemed to look at me in such a life-like way that I was afraid to touch it until Lloyd put a sofa pillow over its head and sat down on it.  Then I began to shear off a little near the tail, where I thought it wouldn’t show much; but the mattress didn’t fill up very fast.  So I kept on shearing, a little farther and a little farther, here a patch and there a patch, until I had taken a great streak out of the middle of the back, and the rug was ruined.”

“What did your father say?” asked Joyce.

“Oh, he was furious!  He said a seven-year-old child ought to know better than to do a thing like that, and if she didn’t she should be taught.  But mamma wouldn’t let him touch me, and only scolded the nurse for not watching me more closely.”

“Now it is Betty’s turn,” said Joyce, when the giggling that followed Eugenia’s tale had subsided.  “What mischief did you get into, Betty?”

Before she could reply there was a step in the hall, a tap at the open door, and a pleasant voice said:  “Good morning, young ladies.”

“Oh, it is the minister’s wife, Mrs. Brewster,” whispered Lloyd, jumping up from the sofa and going forward to greet her.

There was no need of introductions, for the girls had met the sweet-faced old lady several times.

“Mothah isn’t heah, Mrs. Brewster,” said Lloyd.  “She went to town this mawnin’ on the early train, but we are lookin’ fo’ her to come on this next train.  And we are just dyin’ fo’ company, ou’selves.  Won’t you come in an’ wait, please?”

Involuntarily on her arrival the girls stopped lolling in their chairs, and sat up straight, with their hands folded primly in their laps.  Mrs. Brewster had an air of quiet dignity that always made people want to be on their best behaviour before her.  Every one in the Valley was fond of the minister’s wife, but most people stood in awe of her, and considered the turn of their sentences and the pitch of their voices when talking to her.  She never had a pin awry.  Her gray hair was always as smooth as a brush could make it, and every breadth of her skirts always fell in straight, precise folds.  From bonnet-strings to shoe-laces there was never a wrinkle or a spot.  But the Little Colonel felt no awe.  She had discovered that under that prim exterior was a heart thoroughly in sympathy with all her childish joys and griefs, and in consequence the two had become warm friends.  Lloyd stood beside the rocking-chair, where she had seated Mrs. Brewster, and waved a big fan so vigorously that the bonnet-strings fluttered, and a lock of gray hair was blown out of place and straggled across the placid brow.

“We were tellin’ each othah about some of the worst things we evah did in ou’ lives, Mrs. Brewster,” said Lloyd.  “Won’t you tell us about some of the things you did when you were a naughty little girl?”

Mrs. Brewster laughed.  Few people would have remembered that she had ever been a little girl, and only the Little Colonel would have dared to intimate that she had been a naughty one, for she was one of those dignified persons who look as if they had always been proper and grown up.