Her Bed-time

the cherry-tree into the “foreign lands”
beyond the garden wall.

She has much to tell me about the day’s
doings. Yes, she Aas been clay-modelling.
I have seen some of her marvellous baskets
of fruit and birds’ nests and ivy leaves;
but to-day she has been doing what dear
old Mother Nature did in one of her happy
moods some millenniums ago — making a
sea with an island in it; and around the sea
mountains, one a volcano with a crater blaz-
ing with red crayon; and a river with a
bridge across it; quite a boldly conceived
and hospitable fragment of a new planet.
Of course Miss Jessie helped her, but she
would soon be able, all by herself, to create
a new world in which there should be ever-
blossoming spring and a golden age, and
fairies to make the impossible common-
place. W. V. does not put it in that way,
but those, I fancy, would be the character-
istics of a universe of her happy and inno-
cent contriving.

In her early art days W. V. was distinctly
Darwinian. Which was the cow, and which
the house, and which the lady, was always a

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