Sorely puzzled as to the exact path of duty, Margaret tried to explain to the boy how ideas of discipline had changed since Cousin Sophronia was a young girl; how, probably, she had herself been brought up with rigid severity, and, never having married, had kept all the old cast-iron ideas which were now superseded by wider and better knowledge and sympathy. As to this particular point, what should she say? Her whole kind nature revolted against the thought of the hungry child, alone, waking, perhaps weeping, with no one to comfort her; yet how could she, Margaret, possibly interfere with the doings of one old enough to be her mother? Pondering in anxious perplexity, she chanced to raise her eyes to the house. It was brightly lighted, and, as it happened, the curtains had not been drawn. "Look!" said Margaret, pressing the boy's hand in hers. "Basil, look!" One long, narrow window looked directly upon the back stairs, which led from the servants' hall to the upper floor. Up these stairs, past the window, a figure was now seen to pass, swiftly and stealthily; a portly figure, carrying something that looked like a heaped up plate; the figure of Frances the cook. It passed, and in a moment more they saw light, as of an opening door, flash into the dark window of the corner room where the little girl slept. "Do you know, Basil," said Margaret, "I wouldn't worry any more about Susan D.'s being hungry. There is one person in Fernley whom no one, not even Uncle John, can manage; that is Frances." An hour or so later, Margaret was coming down from the nursery. Merton had announced, as bedtime drew near, that he "felt a pain;" and Margaret had no difficulty in tracing it to Mrs. Peyton's careless indulgence. She stole down quietly to the cheerful back room where Frances and Elizabeth sat with their sewing, and begged for some simple remedy. Frances rose with alacrity. "Checkerberry cordial is what you want, Miss Margaret," she said. "I've made it for thirty years, and I hope I know its merits. No wonder the child is sick. If some had their way, everybody in this house 'ud be sick to starvation." "I am afraid it was the other thing in this case, Frances," said Margaret, meekly. "I'm afraid Master Merton ate too many rich things at Mrs. Peyton's." Now in general, Frances could not abide patiently the mention of Mrs. Peyton; but this time she declared she was glad the child had had enough to eat for once. "'Twill do him no harm!" she said, stoutly. "Give him ten drops of this, Miss Margaret, in a wine-glass of hot water,--wait a minute, dear, and I'll mix it myself,--and he'll turn over and go to sleep like a lamb. Treating children as if they was one half starch and t'other half sticks! Don't tell me!"