er arms went out to Rose
with a motherly gesture, and, as she drew her within them, she said,
"Why, my dear child."

"Yes, she _is_ a child," broke in Muriel, eagerly seizing one of Smiles'
hands. "I thought that she was a grown-up woman; but see, she wears her
hair down on her neck just like a school girl."

Let it be said that Miss Merriman had caught the note struck by Rose
that morning, and had arrayed her to appear as young and simple as
possible.

"A child? Of course she is," echoed Mr. MacDonald in a hearty voice. "My
dear, Donald has told us so much about you that I feel almost as though
I had known you all your life. But," he added with little wrinkles
forming at the corners of his kindly gray eyes, "I would like to have
seen you, as my son did first, in that one-piece calico dress. He
described the picture that you made very graphically."

"Oh, look, mother. She's going to _smile_. Remember how pretty Uncle Don
told us she looked when ..."

Rose's shyly budding smile changed to silvery laughter in which all the
rest joined, and with it was sealed the bond of an enduring friendship.
Then baby Don was brought down from the nursery for inspection and,
before he had been contentedly curled in the newcomer's arms many
minutes, he was actually trying to lisp "Mileth," which Ethel proudly
pronounced to be the first articulate word in his vocabulary, if those
universal sounds, which doting parents have ever taken to mean Mother
and Father, be excepted. He liked it so well that he insisted upon
repeating it over and over, with eyes screwed up tight and mouth opened
very wide, which gave him so comical an expression that every one
laughed, including himself.

Manlike, Donald had planned to get all the meetings over with at once,
and had asked his sister to invite Marion in for afternoon tea and to
meet his "protege and prodigy"--as Ethel had phrased it in her
invitation. He had, however, purposely refrained from mentioning the
fact to Rose, and when Miss Treville entered, stately as a goddess, very
beautiful and a trifle condescending in manner, as she extended her
white-gloved hand and said, "So this is little Rose," the girl felt a
sudden chill succeed the warmth of hospitality which had served to
banish all her timid reserve, had brought a glow of happy color to her
cheeks and a sparkle to her luminous eyes, and had made her as wholly
natural as she would have been at home among her simple neighbors of the
mo