tunity while her mother was visiting a friend
in Santa Clara. Once the packing was began, Marie worked with a feverish
intensity of purpose and an eagerness that was amazing, considering her
usual apathy toward everything in her life as she was living it.

Everything but Lovin Child. Him she loved and gloried in. He was like
Bud--so much like him that Marie could not have loved him so much if she
had managed to hate Bud as she tried sometimes to hate him. Lovin Child
was a husky youngster, and he already had the promise of being as tall
and straight-limbed and square-shouldered as his father. Deep in his
eyes there lurked always a twinkle, as though he knew a joke that would
make you laugh--if only he dared tell it; a quizzical, secretly
amused little twinkle, as exactly like Bud's as it was possible for
a two-year-old twinkle to be. To go with the twinkle, he had a quirky
little smile. And to better the smile, he had the jolliest little
chuckle that ever came through a pair of baby lips.

He came trotting up to the suit case which Marie had spread wide open on
the bed, stood up on his tippy toes, and peered in. The quirky smile was
twitching his lips, and the look he turned toward Marie's back was full
of twinkle. He reached into the suit case, clutched a clean handkerchief
and blew his nose with solemn precision; put the handkerchief back all
crumpled, grabbed a silk stocking and drew it around his neck, and was
straining to reach his little red Brownie cap when Marie turned and
caught him up in her arms.

"No, no, Lovin Child! Baby mustn't. Marie is going to take her lovin'
baby boy to find--" She glanced hastily over her shoulder to make sure
there was no one to hear, buried her face in the baby's fat neck and
whispered the wonder, "--to find hims daddy Bud! Does Lovin Man want
to see hims daddy Bud? I bet he does want! I bet hims daddy Bud will
be glad--Now you sit right still, and Marie will get him a cracker, an'
then he can watch Marie pack him little shirt, and hims little bunny
suit, and hims wooh-wooh, and hims 'tockins--"

It is a pity that Bud could not have seen the two of them in the next
hour, wherein Marie flew to her hopeful task of packing her suit case,
and Lovin Child was quite as busy pulling things out of it, and getting
stepped on, and having to be comforted, and insisting upon having on
his bunny suit, and then howling to go before Marie was ready. Bud would
have learned enough to ease the ac