Often these play-times were broken in upon by the Master of the Kitchens, who called them back to their tasks with no great gentleness. Especially was he a hard master to Gareth; and, strangely enough, this was because Gareth was willing and cheerful, for there are people with such crooked places in their minds that they cannot see a person working gladly at a hard task but they want nothing so much as to see if they cannot break their cheerfulness. And that was the sort of master Gareth found in the King's Kitchen. He missed his rides over the downs in the clear air, and the right to go and come as he pleased. But when things seemed hard he cast off the thought and laughed to himself, saying, "It is for the King." In a little while, too, he learned to take fault-finding, and, now and again, a blow, in quietness. And this, too, was for the King. As the days came and went, Bellicent, alone now with her old husband, thought of her son day and night; and the tasks that he must do and the discomforts he must suffer seemed to her a thousand times worse than he ever thought them. At last, when hardly a month of his trial had yet gone by, she could bear it no longer, but sent a messenger to the King to tell him the story, and to take to Gareth a horse and armour and all things that he would need when it should please the King to make him a knight. After the King had seen the messenger he sent for Gareth, and Gareth left his scouring and went gaily and eagerly to him. He was glad in his love for the King, and I think he may have felt that he had borne rather unusual things for his sake. As he came near, the King loved him for his youth and gaiety and faithfulness. But Gareth, looking up into the quiet, loving eyes that were fixed on him, knelt down at the King's feet and bowed his head, and knew that nothing he could do for the King would ever be too much. The King ended Gareth's kitchen service and made him a knight, and some day you will read other stories about him, for he fought many battles and loved a beautiful lady. And it seems likely that the King loved him all the more because he could cook and scour for his sake. BROTHER JUNIPER'S COOKING Have you heard stories about Saint Francis of Assisi? There are a great many, and people like to hear them over and over again. For, though Saint Francis lived most of his life in a little, faraway, country town in Italy, called Assisi, and though he died hundreds of years ago, yet every year many people go to see the place where he lived, and the church where he is buried, and many people in countries far away from Italy love him as well as they do their friends whom they can see and talk to.