She put her arms around Farquharson appealingly.

"Don't be cross with me on my birthday," she pleaded.

Farquharson patted the pretty upraised hands, glittering with diamonds.

"You mustn't look cross at my mamma, Farkson," cooed Baby Phyllis.

Careless, happy days and sparkling nights! Robert and Valentine were always together, their honeymoon endless; in Paris, in Buda-Pesth, in Rome, in Constantinople, in Holland. You should have seen Valentine in the Dutch costume she brought home. Each of the inseparable trio of artists, Mr. Singleton, Mr. Leonard, and Mr. Knowles, painted her portrait, and made love to her, and was laughed at and scolded. It is little enough to say of her that she idolized Robert.

When they returned from their first trip to Norway, in 1897, Robert Oglebay, now forty and growing stout, told his friends he had found what he was looking for at last. The strong, deep sentiment of the North had clutched at him and held him fast. And indeed those shimmering, moonlit studies of the little fishing village, where they spent that summer and autumn, are his best.

Early in the following summer they flitted northward again, with joyful eagerness. They took nine-year-old Phyllis with them.

While her father painted, and her mother read, Phyllis explored crannies in which the receding tide had left tiny, helpless creatures which she examined curiously, and then carried tenderly to the water, lest they perish before the friendly waves came again to cover them.

Their boatman sang songs to her,—strange songs that thrilled her, though she did not understand the words.

At night, in the best room of the little inn, by a bright fire, her father told tales of the vikings; of their high-prowed ships, and the long-haired sailors, with fierce eyes; of their adventurous voyages over unknown seas. The stories ended when the golden head drooped, drowsily.

The portfolio of sketches grew steadily during the weeks that followed.

"Your best work, Robert," said Valentine

"I have found what I have been seeking," was his answer.

They were happy days. Robert painted, early and late, in all weathers. Valentine's joy was in him. Phyllis found hers in a closer companionship with them than she had ever known.

Remembering their eager joy, how tragic the end! Drowned, under the sail of an overturned boat,—together.

Their little Phyllis, saved by the boatman recovered from the shock of icy water and horrible fright before her clothing was dry. She was spared immediate knowledge of her loss. The rough, weatherworn faces she saw in the firelight of the fisherman's cottage, to which she had been carried, were kindly and compassionate. The gloom of early evening, the glow of the firelight, the smell of the sea, the full-rigged ship on a rude wall-bracket, and the moaning wind outside were memories of after years. At the moment, wrapped in a blanket, Phyllis was conscious only of security and warmth. She smiled up at the big fisherman who had rescued her, and made friendly advances to the cluster of ragged little ones who gathered around her, with scared faces and brown, bare legs and feet. When the fisherman's wife tucked her into a warm bed, she inquired sleepily for her mamma. A reassuring caress was the response: the language of motherhood is universal, and requires no words.

The patrol of the rocky inlet ended at dawn. When the burdened groups of booted men tramped past the cottage on their way to the inn, the fisherman's wife, peering through the window in the gray morning light, muttered to herself that both had been found.

Some hours afterward came the innkeeper and the postmaster, the one proud of his English, the other of his responsibilities as first citizen of the village. A large-eyed, terror-stricken Phyllis learned of her loneliness and sobbed on the good woman's broad bosom. The innkeeper and the postmaster smoked their pipes outside until the first outburst of childish grief had spent itself.

It appeared then that the little Miss must tell them to whom they should send a telegram. How painful and new to be obliged to think; how choking were the vague thoughts. But at last a ray of comfort; they should telegraph Farquharson, her dear, dear nurse. The name was slowly spelled. And the address? Perfectly, Phyllis knew the street and number of that fascinating home of hers, but she now remembered that Farquharson would not be there; that Farquharson had gone to visit her brother in a little town in the south of England; a little town of which Phyllis had heard the most wonderful, true stories; but she did not know its name. "Couldn't the telegraph find out?" she asked; and then, overcome with rushing thoughts, abandoned herself again to grief.

"There are Mr. Knowles, Mr. Leonard, and Mr. Singleton," she bethought her. "But they are painting in Algiers."

There was a lady her mamma called Molly, too, whom Phyllis liked very much, who came often to tea, accompanied by a tiny brown dog; but the patient innkeeper could learn no more of her than that mamma always called her Molly; the tiny brown dog's name, Phyllis remembered, was Tip.

How might this poor innkeeper's meager vocabulary convey the idea of relatives to Phyllis's mind? But somehow, at last, it was done.

"Yes," said Phyllis, struck suddenly with the thought. "There is Uncle Peter. But my papa and mamma never went to see him, and he never came to see them." A half-forgotten word occurred to her,—"They were es-tranged."

The innkeeper eyed her doubtfully; but Uncle Peter's last name she knew, of course; was it not her own? And his title, too. The innkeeper, impressed, communicated his intelligence to the postmaster; they made their good-byes awkwardly and left the room.

Two days must elapse before the steamer arrived; ample time for composition. It grieved the innkeeper that another name than the author's must be signed to his telegram; but intellect yielded to rank; the postmaster signed alone.

And so, on a day when the dreary churchyard on a bleak hillside, near the little fishing village, received the poor remains of Robert Oglebay and Valentine, his wife, Sir Peter, in the paneled library of his great London house, read these words:—

Ten days later, Sir Peter Oglebay, with a drawn face, rode homeward through fog-enveloped streets, with a small girl in his arms. One of Phyllis's hands held Sir Peter's tightly, and her tired, little head rested upon his shoulder.

There was a sale, of course, of the thousand luxurious trifles with which improvident Robert Oglebay and his beautiful, spirited, improvident wife had surrounded themselves; trifles which had helped to create the artistic atmosphere that was the breath of life to them. Half a hundred creditors divided the proceeds.

When Sir Peter asked Phyllis what he should save from the wreck for her (not in those words, however) she asked him to send for all the valentines her papa had given her mamma.

"Her name was Valentine, you know, Uncle Peter," explained Phyllis. "I think it is the beautifullest name there is. Long before I was born, and long before they were married, my papa gave my mamma valentines, new ones and old ones too but mostly old ones. They were the prettiest. Some of them are a hundred years old. They are ever so pretty, Uncle Peter, and she let me play with them, whole boxes full of them. I loved them best of all my playthings. Sometimes my papa called me his little Valentine, but they named me Phyllis, after my grandmamma, my papa's mamma. Why, Uncle Peter, she was your mamma, too, wasn't she?" Phyllis, sitting on Sir Peter's lap, regarded him gravely, with new interest. In the end, however, she returned to the subject. All the valentines—boxes and boxes of them—were to be brought to her,