"No," said Little Child, "He needn't. Peter's nice 'nuff." Peter got to his feet with Little Child in his arms, and his face was glowing, and he looked at Miggy as if she were what he meant whenever he said "universe." But Miggy had gone to the couch, and was smoothing the quilt that Peter had wrinkled in all directions, and patting the pillow that Peter had kneaded into a hard ball. "You lay her down," she said. Peter did so, setting the kitten on the floor, and then bending low over the couch, looking in the upturned face as the little dark head touched the pillow and sought its ease, and her hand fell from where it had rested on his shoulder. And he stooped and kissed her cheek more gently than he had ever done anything. "I want my drink o' water," said Little Child, and opened her eyes; and now from the couch she could see me. "Tell me a story," she commanded me, drowsily. I did not go to her, for who am I that I should have broken that trio? But when Miggy and Peter took the lamp and went away to the kitchen for the drink of water and for some simple remedy for the fever which Miggy had noted or fancied, I sat beside Little Child and said over something that had been persistently in my mind as I had watched Miggy with her:-- "I like to stand in this great air And see the sun go down; It shows me a bright veil to wear And such a pretty gown. Oh, I can see a playmate there Far up in Splendour Town!" Little Child began it with me, but her voice trailed away. I thought that in the darkness were many gentle presences--Little Child's tender breathing, the brushing wings of hurrying dreams, and perhaps that other--"not quite my sister," but a shadowy little Margaret. Afterward, Miggy and Peter and I sat together for a little while, but Peter had fallen in a silence. And presently Aunt Effie came home, and on the porch--which seemed not yet to have escaped--she told us about having broken her needle and left her shears at her neighbour's. While Peter ran over to Mis' Holcomb's for the shears, I had a word with Miggy. "Miggy!" I said, "don't you see?" "See what?" she wanted to know, perversely. "How Peter would love to have Little Child, too?" I said. She laughed a little, and was silent; and laughed again. "He was funny and nice," she admitted; "and wasn't Little Child funny not to bless him?" "Because he is nice enough," I reminded her. Miggy laughed once more--I had never seen her in so tender and feminine a mood. And this may have been partly due to the new frock, though I cannot think that it was entirely this. But abruptly she shook her head. "Peter's father went by just before you came in," she said. "He--couldn't hardly walk. What if I was there to get supper for him when he got home? I never could--I never could...."