under circumstances where plodders would have courted disaster.
Rare questions from her mother, brief replies marked the meal. When she had satisfied her hunger she jumped up, ran downstairs with the empty dishes, and came slowly back again,—a slender, supple figure with tangled hair curling below her shoulders, dirty shirt-waist, soiled features and hands, and the ragged blue skirt of a sailor suit hanging to her knees.
"Your other sailor suit is washed and mended," said her mother, smiling at her child in tatters.
Athalie, her gaze remote, nodded absently. After a moment she lifted her steady dark blue eyes:
"A boy kissed me, mamma," she remarked, dropping cross-legged at her mother's feet.
"Don't kiss strange boys," said her mother quietly.
"I didn't. But why not?"
"It is not considered proper."
"Why?"
Her mother said: "Kissing is a common and vulgar practice except in the intimacy of one's own family."
"I thought so," nodded Athalie; "I soaked him for doing it."
"Who was he?"
"Oh, it was that fresh Harry Eldon. I told him if he ever tried to get fresh with me again I'd kill him.... Mamma?"
"Yes?"
"All that about poor old Mr. Manners isn't true, is it?"
Her mother smiled. The children had been taught to leave a morsel on their plates "for manners"; and to impress it upon them their mother had invented a story about a poor old man named Manners who depended upon what they left, and who crept in to eat it after they had retired from table.
So leaving something "for Manners" had been thoroughly and successfully inculcated, until the habit was formed. And now Athalie was the last of the children to discover the gentle fraud practised upon her.
"I'm glad, anyway," concluded the child. "I never thought we left him enough to eat."
Her mother said: "I shall tell you only truths after this. You are old enough to understand reason, now, and to reason a little yourself."
"I do.... But I am not yet perfectly sure where babies come from. You said you would tell me that some day. I'd really like to know, mamma."
Her mother continued to sew for a while, then, passing the needle through the hem she looked down at her daughter.
"Have you formed any opinion of your own?"
"Yes," said the child honestly.
"Then I'd better tell you the truth," said her mother tranquilly, "because the truth is very wonderful and beautiful—and interesting."
So she related to the child, very simply and clearly all that need be told concerning the mystery of life in its beginnings; and Athalie listened, enchanted.
And mostly it thrilled the child to realise that in her, too, lay latent a capability for the creation of life.
Another hour with her mother she remembered in after years.
Mrs. Greensleeve had not been as well: the doctor came oftener. Frequently Athalie returning from school discovered her mother lying on the bed. That evening the child was sitting on the floor at her mother's feet as usual, just inside the circle of lamplight, playing solitaire with an ancient pack of cards.
Presently something near the door attracted her attention and she lifted her head and sat looking at it, mildly interested, until, suddenly, she felt her mother's eyes on her, flushed hotly, and turned her head away.
"What were you looking at?" asked her mother in a low voice.
"Nothing, mamma."
"Athalie!"
"What, mamma?"
"What were you looking at?"
The child hung her head: "Nothing—" she began; but her mother checked her: "Don't lie, Athalie. I'll try to understand you. Now tell me what you were—what you thought you were looking at over there near the door."
The child turned and glanced back at the door over her shoulder.
"There is nothing there—now," she muttered.
"Was there anything?"
Athalie sat silent for a while, then she laid her clasped hands across her mother's knees and rested her cheek on them.
"There was a woman there," she said.
"Where?"
"Over by the door."
"You saw her, Athalie?"
"Yes, mamma."
"Did she open the door and come in and then close it behind her?"
"No."
"How did she come in?"
"I don't know. She—just came in."
"Was she a young woman?"
"No, old."
"Very old?"
"Not very. There was grey in her hair—a little."
"How was she dressed?"
"She wore a night-gown, mamma. There were spots on it—like medicine."
"Had you ever seen her before?"
"I think so."
"Who was she?"
"Mrs. Allen."
Her mother sat very still but her clasped hands tightened and a little of the colour faded from her cheeks. There was a Mrs. Allen who had been suffering from an illness which she herself was afraid she had.
"Do you mean Mrs. James Allen who lives on the old Allen farm?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, mamma."
In the morning they heard of Mrs. Allen's death. And it was several months before Mrs. Greensleeve again spoke to her daughter on the one subject about which Athalie was inclined to be most reticent. But that subject now held a deadly fascination for her mother.
They had been sitting together in Mrs. Greensleeve's bedroom; the mother knitting, in bed propped up upon the pillows. Athalie, cross-legged on a hassock beside her, was doing a little mending on her own account, when her mother said abruptly but very quietly:
"I have always known that you possess a power—which others cannot understand."
The child's face flushed deeply and she bent
