erity to
resolve on looking into the thing for themselves. Consequently the
Dale homestead became a magnet for the curious, and many a skeptic came
and went away convinced that the day of miracles had returned.

As a matter of fact Joel's surrender was in accord with the most
elemental of psychological laws. With the characteristic caprice of
her sex in matters of the heart, Celia had taken a violent fancy to
this pale-blooded hypochondriac, and made no secret of the fact that
she regarded him as her especial property. Nothing is so flattering to
the vanity as the preference of a child, that naive, spontaneous
affection to which it is impossible to impute mercenary motives. And
Joel had responded by becoming Celia's abject slave. He ignored the
other children for the most part, seldom betraying, unless perhaps by
an impatient gesture or a frown, that he was aware of their existence.
But his eyes were always on Celia, and when she spoke, he listened.

As was to be expected, that morsel of femininity improved every
opportunity to parade her conquest. She took Joel to walk, holding
tightly to his hand and entertaining him with an outpouring of those
quaint fancies which have been the heritage of childhood from the
beginning and yet always seem to the older generation so marvelously
new. She inveigled him into playing whatever role she assigned in
fantastic dramas of her own creation. He was Celia's father or her
little boy as the whim took her, the wolf which devoured Red Riding
Hood's grandmother, or the hapless old lady herself, attacked
ruthlessly by Celia as wolf. Crawling on all fours he played elephant,
or with the handle of a basket between his teeth, he submitted to be
patted on the head and addressed as Towser. Persis looked on with a
wonder that never lost its poignancy. That the self-centered Joel
should succumb to the innocent spell of childhood had never entered her
calculations, and she reproached herself that she had so little
understood him.

The comments of Persis' acquaintances were characteristic. Mrs. West,
on the occasion of a second call, hinted her anxiety regarding the
future of the impromptu family. "When you pick children up that way,
you can't tell how they're going to turn out."

"And when you bring 'em into the world," remarked Persis dryly, "and
rear 'em yourself and never let 'em out of your sight when you can help
it, you don't know how they're going to turn out either." Th