queer they should
have made such an unconscious parable in that nonsense-play. But you
can't help making parables, do what you will.

Rosamond Kincaid had her hands full now, she had her little Stephen.

He came like a little angel of delight, in one way; the real, heart
way; but another,--the practical way of day's doing and
ordering,--he came like a little Hun, overrunning and devastating
everything.

While Rosamond had been up-stairs, and Mrs. Waters had been nursing
her, and Miss Arabel coming in and out to see that all was straight
below, it had been lovely; it was the peace of heaven.

But when Mrs. Waters--who was one of those born nurses whom
everybody who has any sort of claim sends for in all emergency of
sickness--had to pack up her valise and go to Portland, where her
niece's son was taken with rheumatic fever, and her niece had
another bleeding at the lungs; when the days grew short, and the
nights long, and the baby _would_ not settle his relations with the
solar system, but having begun his earthly career in the night-time,
kept a dead reckoning accordingly, and continued to make the
midnight hours his hours of demand and enterprise,--the nice little
systematic calculations by which the household had been regulated
fell into hopeless uncertainties.

Dorris had so many music scholars now, that she was obliged to
leave home at nine in the morning; and at night she was very tired.
It was indispensable for her and for Kenneth that dinner should be
punctual. Rosamond could not let Miss Arabel's labors of love grow
into matter-of-course service.

And then there were all the sewing and mending to do; which had not
been anything to think of when there had been plenty of time; but
which, now that the baby devoured all the minutes, and made a
houseful of work beside, began to grow threatening with inevitable
procrastinations.

[Barbara Goldthwaite, who was at home at West Hill with _her_ baby,
averred that _these_ were the angels who came to declare that time
should be no longer.]

Rosamond would not have a nursery maid; she "would not give up her
baby to anybody;" neither would she let a "kitchen girl" into her
paradisiacal realm of shining tins, and top-over cups, and white,
hemmed dishcloths.

"Let's have a companion!" said Dorris. "Let's afford her together."

When their "Christian Register" came, that very week, there was Dot
Ingraham's advertisement.

Mr. Kincaid went into the city, and round