Don't begin teasing her," said Sylvia in a low voice, not lost, however, upon grandmother.
What _was_ lost upon grandmother?
"And what were you all so busy chattering about when I interrupted you just now ?" she inquired, when they were all seated round the tea-table, and thanks to the nice cold chicken and ham, and rolls and butter and tea-cakes, and all manner of good things, the children fast "losing their appetites." Sylvia blushed and looked at Ralph; Ralph grew much interested in the grounds at the bottom of his tea-cup; only Molly, Molly the irrepressible, looked up briskly.
"Oh, nothing," she replied; "at least nothing particular." "Dear me! how odd that you should all three have been talking at once about anything so uninteresting as nothing particular," said grandmother, in a tone which made them all laugh.
"It wasn't _exactly_ about nothing particular," said Molly: "it was about _you_, grandmother dear." "Molly!" said Sylvia reproachfully, but Molly was not so easily to be snubbed.
"We were wishing," she continued, "that you had a gold-headed stick, and then you'd be quite _perfect_." It was grandmother's and aunty's turn to laugh now.
"Only," Molly went on, "Ralph said perhaps you'd beat us with it, and I said no, most likely you'd turn us into frogs or mice, you know." "'Frogs or mice, I know,' but indeed I don't know," said grandmother; "why should I wish to turn my boy and girl children into frogs and mice ?" "If we were naughty, I meant," said Molly.

"Oh, Sylvia, you explain--I always say things the wrong way." "It was I that said you looked like a fairy godmother," said Sylvia, blushing furiously, "and that put it into Molly's head about the frogs and mice." "But the only fairy godmother _I_ remember that did these wonderful things turned mice into horses to please her god-daughter.

Have you not got hold of the wrong end of the story, Molly ?" said grandmother.
"The wrong end and beginning and middle too, I should say," observed Ralph.
"Yes, grandmother dear, I always do," said Molly, complacently.

"I never remember stories or anything the right way, my head is so funnily made." "When you can't find your gloves, because you didn't put them away carefully, is it the fault of the shape of the chest of drawers ?" inquired grandmother quietly.
"Yes, I suppose so,--at least, no, I mean, of course it isn't," replied Molly, taking heed to her words half-way through, when she saw that they were all laughing at her.
Grandmother smiled, but said no more.
"What a wool-gathering little brain it is," she said to herself.
When she smiled, all the children agreed together afterwards, she looked more like a fairy godmother than ever.

She was really a _very_ pretty old lady.