On this afternoon Gracie was the mistress of the house. Mrs. Death had heard of a half day's washing-up of plates and dishes at a German club in the neighbourhood where a festival was being held; and she dared not neglect the opportunity of earning ninepence. She left careful instructions that if father _should_ happen to come back during her absence Gracie was to run like lightning to the club and fetch her home. She had no hope of it, but she had read of miracles in the Bible. So the child stood at the wash-tub, soaping poor little petticoats and stockings with zeal and diligence, holding each garment up to the light and criticising its condition with the eye of an expert. Now and then she shook her head, as though in answer to a question whether this or that tattered article of clothing could be mended; and, the point being settled, plunged it into the wash-tub again for an extra soaping to make up for tatters. And the marvellous patience with which she pursued her task, the absence of anything in the shape of rebellion or protest that she, so young in years, should be set to it! If ever suffering mortal deserved a medal for duty done in the teeth of adverse circumstance, against odds so terrible that the coldest heart must have been moved to pity to witness it, Gracie surely had earned it. But there is no established order on earth for the bestowal of honours in such a cause. Crosses and broad ribbons and sparkling stars are for deeds far different from the devoted heroism she displayed. But a record is kept in Heaven, Gracie, and angels are looking down upon you. How astonished would she have been to know it! She suffered--ah, how she suffered! Every few minutes she was compelled to stop and fight the demon in her chest that scraped and scraped her brittle bones with fiendish cruelty--tearing at her, choking her, robbing her of breath, while she stamped her feet and beat her hands together. "Oh, I say! Gracie's going it," observed Bertie, the low comedian and mimic of the family, and as is the case with better known low comedians when they give utterance to nothing particularly witty, the young audience began to laugh. "Show us, Bertie," they cried. "Do it!" Whereupon, with his own vocal organs, Bertie reproduced Gracie's racking cough. The other children attempted the imitation, but none with success, and he accompanied the cough, moreover, with such an expression of woe upon his face, that the children were lost in admiration. Spurred to greater efforts by their approval he wound up with so faithful a reproduction of Gracie in the last exhausting stage of a paroxysm that it brought down the house. "Is that like it, Gracie?" he asked. "Yes," she answered, with unmoved face, "that's like it." One of the children, burning with envy at her brother's histrionic triumph, expressed her feelings with her legs. "Connie's kicking me, Gracie," cried Bertie, at the same time returning the kicks beneath the bedclothes.