When these occasions had passed and she could reflect back on them, she thought it a blessing that Moira’s correction was in the hands of others than herself. One instance of Mrs. Seymour’s wise manner of dealing with unusual conduct filled her mind with wonder and created for her almost a new conception of life. Aunt Mathilda was consulting with her in the kitchen when Moira burst in and cried: “_Maman_, oh, _Maman_, the calf came right out of the cow! I saw it. I did.” The child’s face was a study. She did not apparently know whether to be very grave, or a little frightened or to laugh, and in one who was so rarely puzzled it would have seemed pathetic had her sudden announcement been less shocking than it was. As they learned afterward, she had witnessed the birth, by sheer accident, while in the stables with Harvey. Ellen blushed scarlet and was on the point of exclaiming indignantly, but Mrs. Seymour checked her with a gesture and took the child in her lap. Then she said in a tone the most natural in the world: “Why, certainly, my dear. That is what happens when all animals are born, and people too. First we are carried in our mothers. Then we walk by ourselves, just as the calf will in a day or two. Now you won’t ever forget that, will you?” Beginning the middle of September and for eight months each year, Miss Cheyney, the governess, came every morning at nine, and quiet reigned while she went over the lessons with the three children shut up in the library. After luncheon, Eberhard, the man, took her back by motor to the train as he had brought her. Ellen was always glad to see her visits begin, not only because Miss Cheyney was very democratic and “nice” to her, and proud of Moira’s progress, but because they ushered in the Fall. She loved the glorious colours that spread out in widening and deepening hues over the wooded hills, until all the world seemed to have put on a flaming cloak. She and the children would fill the house with sumach and maple branches then. And when the men began bringing up the heavy logs that had lain drying in the woods all summer and sawing and splitting them for the fireplaces in the house, she could see in anticipation the flames leaping in the chimney and hear the crackling of the wood in the fierce heat, and watch the glow of dancing light on the children’s faces. She had not seen open fireplaces since the New Orleans days, when they were lighted only for a few weeks in the year; and never had she seen anything to compare with the one in the Blaydon living room which was so high a woman could stand in it while she cleaned.