She shut the door this time, though more frightened than the day before. She stopped short in the middle of the room. Too late! the baby had gone. But there was something she'd never seen before. She went close. How pretty and shiny it was; it smelt like the piano. Why, this was what the strange man had brought up-stairs behind Matilda last night. It was bigger than the musical-box--much bigger. What was in this beautiful, shiny, new thing? She dragged a chair to the table, climbed on it, and looked down into the coffin. She stood some time motionless; then, hearing a noise in the hall, hurriedly lifted a corner of the baby's frock and pushed a yellow ball down against the padded white satin side. In spite of the continued "riling" presence of a grandmother in the house, Val made up her mind to be very good now the baby was gone, and be a comfort to her mother. No more fights with Nanna, even over the hair-combing; no defiant refusals to say her prayers. Standing by the cot in her nightgown the evening of the funeral, "I shall say three prayers," she announced, sternly; "and you mustn't interrupt, Nanna." "Three!" said the nurse, suspicious of such overwhelming piety. "Yes; I shall say, 'Our Father,' and 'Nower Lamy,' and then one of my own--one I can understand as well as God. Now! Sh!" She knelt down and recited the two accustomed petitions, and then, still kneeling there, poured forth some stringent directions to the Lord which horrified the good Christian woman not a little. After that, Val insisted on going to church, rain or shine. She read her Bible with vigor and astonishment, belaboring Nanna with difficult questions. Nanna was so ill-inspired as sometimes to appeal in her perplexity to the elder Mrs. Gano. But this lady found to her cost that the course so successfully pursued with little Ethan was doomed to failure here. When she thought to curb the excessive Gano concern about Biblical interpretation by saying, "It is not a book for children," she was met with: "My Bible says, 'Suffer little children,' and people 'mustn't despise the little ones.'" Her father began to laugh; she felt encouraged to proceed: "And says, 'Search ye the Scriptures,' too; nothin' 'bout waitin' till you're old." "You are too young to understand, even if I should try to explain." "Why, I understand it nearly every bit," she answered, indignantly, "all except the mizz--I can't find where it says about the mizz." "The mizz?" repeated Mrs. Gano. "The mizz?" her father echoed, uneasily. "I haven't read about that myself." "Well, you've heard about it in church. Didn't you go to church when you were young?" "Yes," said her parent, meekly, feeling the full force of her implied criticism. "But I don't recall the--what is it?" "The mizz. Mr. Weston says every Sunday in the Commandments: 'The sea and all that in the mizz.'"