o
learn you."

"Teach you," he corrected, gently.

"Marie says learn you. But of course I'll say 'teach' if you like it
better," with the ready courtesy of a hostess. "You begin with my
feet and go backwards!" Again the escaped laughter. The Child was
happy.

Down the hall where the slender figure stooped above the delicately
written pages the little laugh travelled again and again. By-and-by
another laugh, deep and rich, came hand in hand with it. Then the
figure straightened tensely, for this new laugh was rarer even than
the Child's. Two years--two years and more since she had heard this
one.

"Now it is time to pray me," the Child said, dropping into sudden
solemnity. "Marie lets me kneel to her--" hesitating questioningly.
Then: "It's pleasanter to kneel to somebody--"

"Kneel to me," he whispered. His face grew a little white, and his
hand, when he caressed lightly the frolic-rumpled little head, was
not steady. The stone mask of the man dropped off completely, and
underneath was tenderness and pain and love.

"Now I lame me down to sleep--no, I want to say another one to-night,
Lord God, if Thee please. This is a very particular night, because my
father is in it. Bless my father, Lord God, oh, bless my father! This
is his day. I've loved him all day, and I'm going to again day after
to-morrow. But to-morrow I must love my mother. It would be easier to
love them both forever and ever, Amen."

The Child slipped into bed and slept happily, but the man who was
father of the Child had new thoughts to think, and it took time. He
found he had not thought nearly all of them in his afternoon vigil.
On his way back to his lonely study he walked a little slower past
the other lonely study. The stooping of the slender figure newly
troubled him.

The plan worked satisfactorily to the Child, though there was always
the danger of getting the days mixed. The first mother-day had been
as "intimate" and delightful as the first father-one. They followed
each other intimately and delightfully in a long succession. Marie
found her perfunctory services less and less in requisition, and her
dazed comprehension of things was divided equally with her
self-gratulation. Life in this new and unexpected condition of
affairs was easier to Marie.

"I'm having a beautiful time," the Child one day reported to the
Lady, "only sometimes I get a little dizzy trying to remember which
is which. My father is which to-day." And it was at