Their faces looked scarlet, and as to their hands, it is hard to say of what colour they were originally. It was, however, Bess's special _fête_, so I said nothing tactless about cleanliness, nor did I allude to whispering being against the canons of good manners; for there are moments when a mother should have eyes not to see, and ears not to hear, and as a wise friend once said to me, "half the wisdom of life is knowing when to be indulgent." I need not have feared any excess on the part of the children as regarded the cake and the jam, for they hardly ate any, and Auguste's _chef d'oeuvre_ had only two small slices cut out of it. Bess, I saw, was under the influence of some great excitement. She could hardly sit still a moment, and fidgeted on her chair repeatedly, till I feared she would topple backwards, chair and all. At last tea was over, and grace was said, and the two children, breathless, and absorbed, begged leave to go off. "Yes," I answered, "but not out of doors; for, see, it is raining, and I promised your mother, Hals, that you should not get wet." "Oh no, it's nothing to do with puddles," cried Bess. "But, mum, may I take some pins from your pincushion? Nurse won't let me have as many as I want. And then will you say that nobody--nobody is to go near us?" "Very well," I answered, "only don't do anything that is really wrong." Bess avoided my gaze, and did not answer, and a minute later I heard the two children scuttle up the newel staircase, and shortly after heard the muffled sound of voices in the old tower of the Abbey that a Lawley is said to have erected in the middle of the seventeenth century. [Sidenote: THE FAIRY-STORY] About half an hour after, the children returned to me in the chapel hall. Bess, I noticed, looked white and fagged, and both children seemed exhausted by their play, whatever it was, so I made them sit quiet, fetched my embroidery, and began to tell them a fairy-story. I meandered along the paths of fiction. I fear my story had but little plot, but it had fiery dragons, wild beasts, a fairy prince, and a beautiful fairy princess, and, in the background, a wicked ogre. And as I talked, the children sat entranced.