The Person with a Story smiles obligingly (at least it is to be hoped that she does), and retires into a little corner of her brain, to rummage there for something just fitted to the occasion. That same little corner is densely populated, if she is a lover of children. In it are all sorts of heroic dogs, wonderful monkeys, intelligent cats, naughty kittens; virtues masquerading seductively as fairies, and vices hiding in imps; birds agreeing and disagreeing in their little nests, and inevitable small boys in the act of robbing them; busy bees laying up their winter stores, and idle butterflies disgracefully neglecting to do the same; and then a troop of lost children, disobedient children, and lazy, industrious, generous, or heedless ones, waiting to furnish the thrilling climaxes. The Story-Teller selects a hero or heroine out of this motley crowd,--all longing to be introduced to Bright-Eye, Fine-Ear, Kind-Heart, and Sweet-Lips,--and speedily the drama opens. Did Rachel ever have such an audience? I trow not. Rachel never had tiny hands snuggling into hers in “the very best part of the story,” nor was she near enough her hearers to mark the thousand shades of expression that chased each other across their faces,--supposing they had any expression, which is doubtful. Rachel never saw dimples lurking in the ambush of rosy cheeks, and popping in and out in such a distracting manner that she felt like punctuating her discourse with kisses! Her dull, conventional, grown-up hearers bent a little forward in their seats, perhaps, and compelled by her magic power laughed and cried in the right places; but their eyes never shone with that starry lustre that we see in the eyes of happy children,--a lustre that is dimmed, alas, in after years. Their eyes still see visions, but the “shadows of the prison house” have fallen about us, and the things which we have seen we “now can see no more!”