breakfast, with her independent little hands in her jacket pockets. Money was not especially plenty in the home at Darmstadt, and the Princess mother wrote at one time of the little Elizabeth's wearing Victoria's last year's gowns, and at another said that she had just made seven little dresses for the children. With a German father and an English mother, the little Victoria spoke at first a comical combination of German and English, and she announced one day, "Meine Grossmama, die Konigin, has got a little vatch with a birdie." There was also a little boy in England who was taking much of the Queen's attention, the baby son of the Prince of Wales. He was born at Frogmore House, and as all the clothes provided for him were at Marlborough, he fared no better for raiment at first than if he had been born in a cottage. The loss was made up to him, however, when he was christened; for then he was gorgeous in a robe of Honiton lace, the same one in which his father had been christened, while over the robe was a cloak of crimson velvet with a lining of ermine. Nothing could be too rich and costly, for some day, if he lived long enough, he would wear the English crown. One matter in which the royal family were most economical was in regard to names, for they used the same ones over and over. This little boy was named Albert, for his English grandfather; Victor, for the Queen; Christian, for his Danish grandfather; and Edward, for his father. Princess "Alix" was as eager to be with her precious baby as the Queen had been to stay with her children, and she looked like a mischievous child when she had succeeded in slipping away from some grand company long enough to give baby "Eddie" his bath and put him to bed. The little Princess Beatrice was scarcely more than a baby herself, but she seems to have felt all the responsibility of being aunt to so many small people. When she was hardly more than three years old, Princess "Vicky's" second child was born, and then Prince Albert wrote of the little girl to his eldest daughter, "That excellent lady has now not a moment to spare. 'I have no time,' she says when she is asked for anything. 'I must write letters to my niece!'"