She opened the closet door. It was as dainty and neat as Mistress Mary herself, and the mere sight of it bred order in Lisa’s thoughts. On the top of a pile of envelopes lay the sewing-picture that Atlantic had spoiled that day. It had been a black morning, and the bit of cardboard was torn and soiled and bent. Lisa looked at it with a maternal and a prophetic eye. She could see the firm line of Rhoda’s lip as she bore down upon the destructive urchin. She could almost hear the bright challenging tone as Rhoda would say: ‘Now, Atlantic, let us see what we can do! Cut off the chewed edges with these scissors, paste these thin pieces of paper over the torn places, and rub the card with this crust of bread. A new one? Certainly _not_, my young friend!’ Lisa took the poor little object in her hand, and, seeing Mistress Mary’s white apron, pressed her cheek against it in a transport of tenderness and hung it over her arm. Just then she caught sight of the clay bird’s-nest that Pacific had modelled—such a lovely bird’s-nest that it had been kept for the cabinet. She carried her treasures over to the old-fashioned lounge where the babies took their occasional nap, put them carefully in a small red chair close beside it, and then, stretching her weary length on the cushions, she kissed the smooth folds of the apron, and clasped it in her arms. Mistress Mary would come soon. She would come in her cloud of white, and her steel fillet would gleam and shine when the sunshine fell upon it, and make star-rays and moonbeams and lightning-flashes; and the tiny points would twinkle and wink and laugh and blink whenever she turned her head. She would smile, and everything would suddenly be clear; she would speak, and the weary buzzing of windmills in the brain would be hushed. Under her touch the darkness and heaviness would vanish, and there would be no more night there—no more night. As these healing visions stole upon Marm Lisa, the torture and the anguish, the long hours of bewilderment, faded little by little, little by little, till at length a blessed sleep crept over her eyelids, blotting into a merciful nothingness the terror and the misery of the day. X THE TWINS JOIN THE CELESTIALS