“Oh,” replied Aunt Judy, “it was soon settled that Tommy Brown was to have the dinner, which made the little Victim so happy, he actually jumped for joy.  On which the stranger lady told them she hoped they would henceforth always ask themselves her curious question whenever they sat down to a good meal again.  ‘For,’ said she, ’my dears, it will teach you to be thankful; and you may take my word for it, it is always the ungrateful people who are the most miserable ones.’”

“Oh, Aunt Judy!” here interposed No. 6, somewhat vehemently, “you need not tell any more!  I know you mean us by the little Victims!  But you don’t think we really mean to be ungrateful about the beds, or the dinners, or anything, do you?”

There was a melancholy earnestness in the tone of the inquiry, which rather grieved Aunt Judy, for she knew it was not well to magnify childish faults into too great importance:  so she took No. 6 on her knee, and assured her she never imagined such a thing as their being really ungrateful, for a moment.  If she had, she added, she should not have turned their little ways into fun, as she had done in the story.

No. 6 was comforted somewhat on hearing this, but still leant her head on Aunt Judy’s shoulder in a rather pensive state.

“I wonder what makes one so tiresome,” mused the meditative No. 5, trying to view the matter quite abstractedly, as if he himself was in no way concerned in it.

“Thoughtlessness only,” replied Aunt Judy, smiling.  “I have often heard mamma say it is not ingratitude in children when they don’t think about the comforts they enjoy every day; because the comforts seem to them to come, like air and sunshine, as a mere matter of course.”

“Really?” exclaimed No. 6, in a quite hopeful tone.  “Does mamma really say that?”

Yes; but then you know,” continued Aunt Judy, “everybody has to be taught to think by degrees, and then they get to know that no comforts ever do really come to anybody as a matter of course.  No, not even air and sunshine; but every one of them as blessings permitted by God, and which, therefore, we have to be thankful for.  So you see we have to learn to be thankful as we have to learn everything else, and mamma says it is a lesson that never ends, even for grown-up people.

“And now you understand, No. 6, that you—­oh!  I beg pardon, I mean the little victims—­were not really ungrateful, but only thoughtless; and the wonderful stranger lady did something to cure them of that, and, in fact, proved a sort of Aunt Judy to them; for she explained things in such a very entertaining manner, that they actually began to think the matter over; and then they left off being stupid and unthankful.

“But this reminds me,” added Aunt Judy, “that you—­tiresome No. 6—­ have spoilt my story after all!  I had not half got to the end of the miseries.  For instance, there was the taking-care misery, in consequence of which the little Victims were sent out to play on a fine day, and kept in when it was stormy and wet, all because those stupid keepers were more anxious to keep them well in health than to please them at the moment.