Odd | Page 3

of you to-night?' asked Betty eagerly.
'Don't chatter such nonsense; it's strange times when children begin to pick their elders to pieces. You weren't asked for, Miss Betty; and Master Douglas is to go down and behave himself.'
'The three B's aren't big enough yet to leave the nursery.'
Douglas said this with a sparkle of mischief in his eye. It was a sore point with Betty to be ranked with the twins, for she was only a year behind Douglas. Long ago he had seized hold of a laughing joke of his father's, alluding to the names by which the three youngest children were called, and had twitted her with it ever since.
'B for Baby--Baby Betty, Baby Bobby, and Baby Billy; babies must go to bed,' he explained.
Betty gave an angry kick under the table, but did not speak.
She was very silent for the rest of that evening; but when she and Molly were safely in bed, and the room was very quiet, she asked,--
'Molly, do you know what tribulation means?'
'I'm not sure that I do,' was the hesitating reply; 'I think it's something dreadful. Why do you want to know?'
'Is it like the dark valley Christian went through in the Pilgrim's Progress, or the goblin's cave we make up about?'
'I expect it is something like. Why?'
'It's on the way to heaven,' whispered Betty, in an awestruck tone; 'the Bible says so.'
There was silence, then Molly said,--
'There's a book in father's library will tell you about it. It tells the meaning of every word; father said so. A dick something it is.'
'I'll ask Mr. Roper to get it for me.'
And Betty turned over on her pillow comforted by this thought, and fell fast asleep.
Mr. Stuart was a Member of Parliament, and being a man who threw his whole soul into everything he did, was too much engrossed with business when in town to have much to do with his children. He spent a great part of his day in the library with his secretary, a quiet young fellow, who was looked upon by the children as an embodiment of wisdom and learning. Mrs. Stuart saw as little of her children as her husband; her time was fully occupied in attending committee meetings, opening bazaars, and superintending numerous pet projects for ennobling and raising the standard of social morality amongst the masses. She was not an indifferent mother; she was only an active, busy woman, who, after carefully selecting a thoroughly good and trustworthy woman as her nurse, left the children's training with perfect confidence to her. And between her social and charitable claims there was not much time for having her little ones about her. A young governess came every day for two hours to teach the three eldest ones, but their life was essentially a nursery one. And when the House was closed, and the husband and wife would go off to the Continent or to the Highlands, the children would be sent to a quiet seaside town with their nurse and the nursery maid.
The following afternoon a little figure stole quietly down to the library door. Betty knew her father was out, and Mr. Roper never repulsed any of the children. After a timid knock she passed in, and made a little picture as she stood in the firelight, in her brown velveteen frock and large white-frilled pinafore.
'Well,' said Mr. Roper, wheeling round from his writing-desk, 'what do you want, Betty?'
'I want one of father's books,' the child said earnestly, 'one that Dick Somebody wrote--a book that tells the meaning of everything.'
'I wish there was such a one in existence,' said the young man, smiling a little sadly. 'Now what is in your little head, I wonder?'
'It's a word I want to find, please.'
'Oh, a word! Bless the child, she means a dictionary!' and Mr. Roper laughed as he drew a fat volume out of a shelf, and placed it on a table by the little girl.
'May I help you to find it?'
'It's tribulation. I don't know how it's spelt.'
He did not ask questions; that was one thing that attracted Betty towards him. She was a curious mixture of frankness and reserve. She would confide freely of her own free will, but if pressed by questions would relapse at once into silence. He found the word for her, and she read with difficulty, 'Trouble, distress, great affliction.'
'Do they all mean tribulation?' she asked.
'Tribulation means all of them,' was the answer.
'And can children have tribulation, Mr. Roper?'
'What do you think?'
'I must have it if I'm to get to heaven,' she said emphatically; and then she left him, and the young man repeated her words to himself with a sigh and a smile, as he replaced the book in its resting-place.
CHAPTER II
'Mother Nature'
A few evenings after this, as nurse was undressing the