And she laughs such a soft, cooing little laugh, like the chirring of a ring-dove, and nods shyly back in reply to the tall maid's questioning look. The latter goes out, and comes back with a flat, red-painted deal box, and unlocks it. It does not hold very much, and the tiny garments are not of costly material; but the two women pore over them as a gem collector over a rare stone. She has a glimpse of thick-crested paper as the girl unties a packet of letters, and looks away until she says tenderly,-- "Look, M'am!" A little bit of hair inside a paper heart. It is almost white, so silky and so fine that it is more like a thread of bog-wool than a baby's hair; and the mistress, who is a wife, puts her arms round the tall maid, who has never had more than a moral claim to the name, and kisses her in her quick way. The afternoon is drawing on; she is kneeling before an open trunk, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. A heap of unused, dainty lace-trimmed ribbon-decked cambric garments are scattered around her. She holds the soft, scented web to her cheek and smiles musingly; and then she rouses herself and sets to work, sorting out the finest, with the narrowest lace and tiniest ribbon, and puckers her swarthy brows, and measures lengths along her middle finger, and then gets slowly up, as if careful of herself as a precious thing, and half afraid. "Lizzie!" "Yes, M'am!" "Wasn't it lucky they were too fine for every day? They will be so pretty. Look at this one with the tiny valenciennes edging. Why, one nightgown will make a dozen little shirts,--such elfin-shirts as they are too; and Lizzie!" "Yes, M'am!" "Just hang it out on the lilac-bush,--mind, the lilac-bush!" "Yes, M'am!" "Or, Lizzie, wait: I'll do it myself!" NOW SPRING HAS COME. A CONFIDENCE. "_When the spring-time comes, gentle Annie, and the flowers are blossoming on the plain! Lal, lal, la, la, la, lallallalla, lal, lal, lal, la, la, la, la, la. When the spring-time comes, gentle Annie, and the mockin'-bird is singing on the tree!_" "I don't believe that mocking-bird line belongs to the song at all, Lizzie; you never do get a thing right!" The words have a partly irritated, partly contemptuous tone, that seems oddly at variance with the size of the child who utters them. She is lying flat on her stomach on the floor, resting her elbows at each side of a book she is reading, holding her sharp chin in the palms of her hands, waving her skinny legs in unconscious time to the half tired, half feverish lilt of the nurse as she jogs the baby in time to the tune. She gazes, as she speaks, at the girl with a pair of unusually bright, penetrating eyes. This mocking-bird line never fails to annoy her. "Troth, an if I cud get the young limb to slape I wouldn't care if 'twas mockin'-birds or tom cats!" is the indifferent answer. * * * * *