between them suggested itself quickly and faintly; she was
grasping at an elusive something with all the fine little quivering
brain-tentacles that lay hold of spiritual apprehension.

Just at that moment the parlor bell rang.

"I'll go," she said. "You keep to your sewing. It's for the nursery,
I guess, and I'll do my poem up there."

She caught up pencil and paper, and the other fragment also,--Mrs.
Scherman's own rhyme about the "peaches."

Mrs. Scherman met her at the parlor door.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you," she said; "but the baby is stirring.
Could you, or Kate, go up and try to hush her off again? If I go,
she'll keep me."

"I will," said Bel. "Here is that 'Crambo' you were talking of at
tea, Mrs. Scherman. I kept it. Kate picked it up with the scraps."

"O, thank you! Why, Bel, how your face shines!"

Bel hurried off, for Baby Karen "stirred" more emphatically at this
moment. Asenath went back into the parlor.

"Here is that rhyme of mine, Frank, that you were asking for. Bel
found it in the dust-pan. I believe she's writing rhymes herself.
She tries out every idea she picks up among us. She had a pencil in
her hand, and her face was brimful of something. Mr. Stalworth, if
_I_ find anything in the dust-pan, I shall turn it over to you.
'First and Last' is bound to act up to its title, and transpose
itself freely, according to Scripture."

"'First and Last' will receive, under either head, whatever you will
indorse, Mrs. Scherman,--and the last not least,"--returned the
benign and brilliant editor.

Bel had a knack with a baby. She knew enough to understand that
small human beings have a good many feelings and experiences
precisely like those of large ones. She knew that if _she_ woke up
in the night, she should not be likely to fall asleep again if
pulled up out of her bed into the cold; nor if she were very much
patted and talked to. So she just took gently hold of the upper
edge of the small, fine blanket in which Baby Karen was wrapped, and
by it drew her quietly over upon her other side. The little limbs
fell into a new place and sensation of rest, as larger limbs do;
little Karen put off waking up and crying for one delicious instant,
as anybody would; and in that instant sleep laid hold of her again.
She was safe, now, for another hour or two, at least.

Mrs. Scherman said she had really never had so little trouble with a
baby as with this one, who had nobody especially appointed to mak