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“The announcement was received with delight, and no doubt was ever expressed as to the genuineness of the answers which I regularly supplied, written, by the by, in excellent English, but with Reka Dom neatly effected in Russian characters on the note-paper. In the first place, I allowed no awkward inquiries into the machinery of my little plots for the benefit of the rest; and in the second, we had all, I think, a sort of half-and-half belief, a wilful credulity in reference to our many fancies (such as fairies and the like), of which it is impossible to give the exact measure. But when, the six weekly letters having become rather burdensome, I left off writing answers from Ivan to myself, the others began to inquire why Ivan never wrote now. As usual, I refused to give any explanations, and after inventing several for themselves which answered for awhile, they adopted by general consent an idea put forth by little Phillis. The child was sitting one day with her fat cheek on her hand, and her eyes on the rhubarb-pot, waiting for her share of the correspondence to be read aloud to her, when the fancy seemed to strike her, and she said quietly, but with an air of full conviction–

“‘I know what it is–Ivan is dead.’

“The idea took strange hold of us all. We said, ‘Perhaps he is dead,’ and spoke and thought of him as dead, till I think we were fully persuaded of it. No chair was set for him at the dolls’ feasts, and I gained a sort of melancholy distinction as being without a partner now. ‘You know Mary has no little Russian, since Ivan is dead.’

“When our visible pets died, we buried them with much pomp, to the sound of a drum and a tin trumpet, in a piece of ground by the cabbage-bed; but in the present instance that ceremony was impossible. We resolved, however, to erect a gravestone to the memory of our fancy friend in his own garden. I had seen letters cut on stone, and was confident that with a chisel and hammer nothing could be easier. These the nursery tool-box furnished. I wrote out an elaborate inscription headed by Reka Dom in Russian characters, and we got a stone and set to work. The task, however, was harder than we had supposed. My long composition was discarded, and we resolved to be content with this simple sentence, To the memory of Ivan. But ‘brevity is the soul of wit,’ and the TO took so long to cut, that we threw out three more words, and the epitaph finally stood thus:

TO IVAN.

“In a rude fashion this was accomplished; and with crape on our arms and the accustomed music we set up the stone among the lilies.

* * * * *

“In time, Ida, we grew up, as it is called. Almost before we knew it, and whilst we still seemed to be looking forward to our emancipation from nursery authority and childish frocks, Fatima and I found ourselves grown-up young ladies, free to fashion our costume to our own tastes, and far from Reka Dom. Yes, we had changed our home again. The River House was ours no longer. Childhood also had slipped from our grasp, but slowly as the years had seemed to pass, they had not sufficed to accomplish every project we had made in them. Not one of those long summers by the river had seen that gorgeous display of flowers in our garden which in all good faith and energy we planned with every spring. I had not learnt Russian. Years had gone by since I first took up the fat grammar, but I had acquired little since that time beyond the familiar characters of the well-beloved name, Reka Dom.