her sister, the school-teachers, from the
hall-room on that floor, and the Winchells, mother and daughter and
son, in the two front rooms on the third floor, and the two clerks in
the back room. Uncle John and Aunt Adele had the pleasant big back room
on the middle floor, and Nana existed darkly in the small room that
finished that floor. The persons who filled his world, if they went
away to the country at all in summer, went only for a fortnight, and
this gave Mother only the time she needed to have their blankets washed
and their rooms papered and the woodwork cleaned before their return.

Of them all, of course he liked Uncle John and Aunt Adele best, as
Mother did. He had seen Aunt Adele kiss his mother, and often she and
Uncle John would get into such gales of laughter at dinner that even
Nana, even Teddy, in his high-chair, would laugh violently in sympathy.
All the boarders were kind to Teddy, but Uncle John was much more than
kind. He brought Teddy toys from Broadway, sombreros and moccasins and
pails. He was never too tired when he came home at night to take Teddy
into his lap, and murmur long tales of giants and fairies. And on long,
wet Sundays he had been known to propose trips to the Zoo and the
Aquarium.

Flanking his own picture on his mother's bureau was a photograph of a
magnificent person in velvet knickerbockers and a frilled shirt with a
cocked hat under his arm. This was Daddy, Teddy's mother told him; he
must remember Daddy! But Teddy could not remember him.

"Darling--don't you remember Muddy taking you down to a train, and
don't you remember the big man that carried you and bought you a
sand-machine?"

"Where is my sand-machine, Moth'?" the little boy would demand
interestedly.

"But Teddy, my heart, you were a big boy then, you were long past two.
CAN'T you remember?"

No use. When Wallace came back he must make the acquaintance of his son
all over again. Martie would sigh, half-vexed, half-amused.

"Aren't they the queer little things, Adele? He remembers his
sand-machine and doesn't remember his father!"

"Oh, I don't know, Martie. That was just after we came, you know. And I
remember thinking that Teddy was a mere baby then!"

"Well, Wallace may be back any day now." Martie always sighed deeply
over the courageous phrase. Wallace had followed a devious course in
these years of the child's babyhood. Short engagements, failures, weeks
on the road, some work in stock companies in the