Regie had always considered Hester as the very soul of honor, that mysterious honor which he was beginning to dimly apprehend through her allegiance to it, and which, in his mind, belonged as exclusively to her as the little bedroom under the roof.
"Regie," said Hester, tremulously, seeing that she had unwittingly put a stumbling-block before the little white feet she loved, "when we played at the doll's tea-party, and you were the butler, I did not mean you were really a butler, did I? I knew, and you knew, and we all knew, that you were Regie all the time."
"Ye-es."
"It was a game. And so when Uncle Dick found us playing the tea-party game he played another game about the flying half-penny."
"Then it was a common half-penny, after all," said Regie, with a deep sigh.
"Yes, it was a common half-penny, only the game was that it could fly, like the other game was that the acorn cups were real teacups. So Uncle Dick and all of us were not saying what was not true. We were all playing at a game. Do you understand, my little mouse?"
"Yes," said Regie, with another voluminous sigh, and Hester realized, with thankfulness, that the half-penny and not herself had fallen from its pedestal. "I see now; but when he said, Hi! Presto! and it flew away, I thought I saw it flying. Mary said she did. And I suppose the gate was only a game, too."
Hester felt that the subject would be quite beyond her powers of explanation if once the gate were introduced into it.
She laid Regie down and covered him.
"And you will go to sleep now. And I will ask Uncle Dick when next he comes to show us how he did the game with the half-penny."