s--and big things like a dress or a hat he does not notice."

"Men are like that," Nancy said. "Last night when I put on my new
rose-colored gown for the first time, your friend Monsieur Dick told
me he had always liked that dress best of all."

"_Comme il est drole_, Monsieur Dick," Sheila said; "he asked me to
grow up and marry him some day. He said I should sit on a cushion and
sew a fine seam, and feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream--like
the poetry."

"And what did you say?" Nancy asked.

"I said that I thought I should like to marry him if I ever got to be
big enough,--but I was afraid I should not be bigger for a long time.
Miss Betty said she would marry him if I was _trop petite_."

"What did Dick say to that?" Nancy could not forbear asking.

"He said she was very kind, and maybe the time might come when he
would think seriously of her offer."

There was a feeling in Nancy's breast as if her heart had suddenly got
up and sat down again. Betty bore no remotest resemblance to the pale
kind girl, practically devoid of feminine allure, that Nancy had
visualized as the mate for Dick, and frequently exhorted him to go in
search of.

"Miss Betty was only making a joke," she told Sheila sharply.

"We were all making jokes, Miss Dear," Sheila explained.

"I have never loved any one in the world quite so much as I love you,
Sheila," Nancy cried in sudden passion as the little girl turned her
face up to be kissed, as she always did when the conversation puzzled
her.

"I like being loved," Sheila said, sighing happily. "My father loves
me,--when he is not painting or eating. He is very good to me, I
think."

"Your father is a very wise man, Sheila," Nancy said, "he understands
beautiful things that other people don't know anything about. He looks
at a flower and knows all about it, and--and what it needs to make it
flourish. He looks at people that way, too."

"But he doesn't always have time to get the flower what it wants,"
Sheila said; "my jessamine died in Paris because he forgot to water
them."

"Your father needs taking care of himself, Sheila. We must plan ways
of trying to make him more comfortable. Don't you think of something
that he needs that we could get for him?"

"More socks--he would like," Sheila said unexpectedly. "When his socks
get holes in them he will not wear them. He stops whatever he is doing
to mend them, and the mends hurt him. He mends my stockings, too,
sometimes, but