e was a tall, hollow-chested man, with a dark, sallow face and an
ungainly figure. There were suggestions of both ill-health and
wretchedness in his appearance, and his manner was awkward and
embarrassed. Two human beings more utterly unlike each other than himself
and the man who held his hand could not possibly have been found. It was
Baird who held his hand, not he Baird's, and it was Baird who seemed to
speak while he listened, while with his free hand he touched the hair of
the child Annie.

"Well," remarked Mrs. Stornaway, "Mr. Baird seems to have taken a fancy
to him. I don't think he's attractive myself. Are they going to talk to
him all day?"

"No," said Miss Amory, "he is going now."

He was going. Baird had released his hand and he was looking in a gloomy,
awkward way at Annie, as if he did not know how to make his adieux. But
Annie, who was a simple child creature, solved the difficulty for him
with happy readiness. She flung both her small arms about his ungainly
body and held up her face.

"Kiss me three times," she said; "three times."

Latimer started and flushed. He looked down at her and then glanced
rather timidly at Baird.

"Kiss her," said Baird, "it will please her--and it will please me."

Latimer bent himself to the child's height and kissed her. The act was
without grace, and when he stood upright he was more awkward and
embarrassed than ever. But the caress was not a cold or rough one, and
when he turned and strode away the flush was still on his sallow cheek.

CHAPTER XIII

The Stornaway parlours were very brilliant that evening in a Willowfield
sense. Not a Burton, a Larkin, or a Downing was missing, even Miss Amory
Starkweather being present. Miss Amory Starkweather was greatly respected
by the Stornaways, the Downings, the Larkins, and the Burtons, the
Starkweathers having landed upon Plymouth Rock so early and with such a
distinguished sense of their own importance as to lead to the impression
in weak minds that they had not only founded that monumental corner-stone
of ancestry, but were personally responsible for the Mayflower. This
gentlewoman represented to the humorous something more of the element of
comedy than she represented to herself. She had been born into a world
too narrow and provincial for the development of the powers born with
her. She had been an ugly girl and an ugly woman, marked by the hopeless
ugliness of a long, ill-proportioned face, small eyes, an