To almost any child seeing it for the first time, especially on Saturday, with the bands of music and the thousands of children, and the variety of sports, the sunshine, the trees, the flowers, the lakes and ponds, it must have seemed the Garden of Eden revived—a heaven on earth. But for homesick and heartsick, pale and large-eyed little Owlet it had no pleasures. “Look how beautiful it is!” said Hanson. “Don’t you like it?” “Not half as well as Lady’s garden! Oh, take me there!” pleaded the child. “You shall go as soon as you are well enough,” Hanson answered. “Listen to the music, my dear. Isn’t it delightful?” suggested the nurse, as the whole brass band struck up some jubilant martial air. “I’d rather hear Lady sing ‘Come Sound His Praise Abroad,’ or Ducky Darling turn the little broken music box, than the whole of this! Oh! take me back to them!” Again she was promised to have her will as soon as she should be able. But Owlet was beginning to disbelieve in promises, and to lay out plans for herself—idiotic little plans, indeed. The child was like some poor, little, forsaken, puzzled pet dog, pining for its absent mistress, not knowing how it had been separated from her, longing to find her, but ignorant where to look for her in all the wilderness of the world, in all the despairful immensity of space. And like this poor, silly, helpless little quadruped, Owlet felt an irresistible instinct to go away and look for her beloved all over the great earth until she should find her. With a cunning beyond her years—a cunning, however, which is often found in connection with imbecility of mind, and even with idiocy—she concealed her purpose and watched for her opportunity. Owlet was never left alone except when her nurse would go down to meals—fifteen minutes for breakfast, twenty for dinner—until sunset, when Mrs. Gilbert would put the child to bed, arrange her comfortably for the night, leave her safe in the little room, while generally Hanson would be reading or writing in the larger room, and go downstairs to join the other ladies’ maids and children’s nurses at their tea, and where all those whose duties, like those of Mrs. Gilbert, were over for the day, would remain gossiping together for an indefinite time. This was the opportunity which the poor, forlorn, homesick child resolved to seize, on the first occasion on which Hanson also should be absent from the outer room. The occasion came at length.