The children stared at her. This note of authority was something they did not question. There was something in this wide-eyed pale little seamstress' command that was unlike anything they had ever heard. They followed Felicia meekly enough. They walked quietly while she moved to the least covered and least ornate corner of the apartment--an alcove with a bookcase and a flat writing table. "This," announced the older child, "won't do. It's Faddo's ONE CORNER and he will not let it be touched." Felicia laughed. "Then there is but one thing for us to do," she announced leading her small sheep behind her. "We shall have to go back to that unhappy room and make ourselves ONE CORNER--" So back they went and watched her fling open the window. They obeyed her commands without murmuring for the next quarter of an hour. They helped her smooth their lumpy beds. They helped her stack the wrecked toys into an orderly heap. They helped her fold the heaps of mended and unmended garments. And when it was done she sat down on the floor on her knees as she had knelt so many times in her garden and smiled at them. She drew a long breath. You must remember that she had never known a child except that strange child: _herself_. She could only treat them as she had treated the lost flowers in her garden. Or perhaps, she thought, she could try treating them as she treated Babiche, but in another thoughtful second--(during which she nearly lost their strangely won attention)--she clapped her hands. Those scowls on their puckered little foreheads were like Grandfather's in the old days when he had been wrangling with Certain Legal Matters. She seemed to hear her mother's happy voice: "It's not easy. But it's a game too. You see some one who is tired or cross or worried and you think 'This isn't pleasant.' Maybe you play a little on your lute, maybe you tell something droll that happened in the kennel or the garden--" She drew another long breath, "Let's pretend--" she began in her low contralto "let's pretend I have a little lute to make music for you." She sunk back on a hassock and held her arms in position for playing a lute. The children settled in crossed legged heaps and regarded her solemnly. "I haven't really a lute of course, so I shall have to whistle instead of playing the strings and I can't sing any words while I'm whistling so I shall have to tell you the story before I make the song--the first little song I'm going to do on my lute is about a bridge and how the pretty ladies liked to dance across it." They pretended it with her rather timorously at first, but presently they were singing "sur le pont d'Avignon." A door swung open and a grizzled man in a dripping raincoat blocked the doorway. The children looked around at him. "Go away, Papa," ordered the older one casually. "We are pretending." He laughed. "And why, may I ask, shouldn't I be allowed to pretend with you?"