TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl.
Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please
Rose, who was bound to suffer so. " There,"
she said, stopping by the window on the landing,
"there they are again/' Joseph had settled on
another tree-top. " Don't you think they mind,"
she said to Jasper, " having their wings broken? "
Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph and
Mary? He shuffled a little on the stairs, and
felt rebuked, but not seriously, for she did not
understand the fun of shooting birds; that they
did not feel; and being his mother she lived away
in another division of the world, but he rather
liked her stories about Mary and Joseph. She
made him laugh. But how did she know that
those were Mary and Joseph? Did she think
the same birds came to the same trees every night?
he asked. But here, suddenly, like all grown-up
people, she ceased to pay him the least attention.
She was listening to a clatter in the hall.

" They've come back! " she exclaimed, and
at once she felt much more annoyed with them
than relieved. Then she wondered, had it hap-
pened? She would go down and they would
tell her—but no. They could not tell her any-
thing, with all these people about. So she must
go down and begin dinner and wait. And, like
some queen who, finding her people gathered in
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