At this Helen immediately brightened more than she had yet done, and explained that her son was six and her daughter ten. Everybody said that her boy was like her and her girl like Ridley. As for brains, they were quick brats, she thought, and modestly she ventured on a little story about her son,--how left alone for a minute he had taken the pat of butter in his fingers, run across the room with it, and put it on the fire--merely for the fun of the thing, a feeling which she could understand.