n her
arrival had so far subsided that grandma was beginning to turn her
attention to cheese-making, her two aunties to sew vigorously on their
new cambric dresses, and grandpa and the big hired man to become so
engaged in the "haying" that they scarcely saw Lily-toes except at
supper-time.

Lily-toes, as if to make amends for being the fourth, was a lovely
chubby baby of eight months, so full of sunshine and content and blessed
good health, that although her two first teeth were just grumbling
through, she would sit in her high chair by the window or roll and
wriggle about on the floor, singing tuneless songs and telling herself
wordless stories, an hour at a time, without making any demands on
anybody, so that grandma and the aunties declared that half the time
they would not know there was a baby in the house. Perhaps it is
sometimes a fault to be too good-natured; for there came a certain
afternoon when Lily-toes would have been pleased if somebody had
remembered there _was_ a baby in the house.

It happened in this way. There was company at grandma's. Not the kind of
city company that comes to dine after babies are in bed for the night,
but country company,--that comes early in the afternoon and stays and
talks over whole life-times before tea. Grandma, mamma, and the aunties
were enjoying it all very much; and Lily-toes, who was, if possible,
more angelic than ever, had wakened from a blessed nap, lunched on bread
and milk and strawberries, and was stationed in her high chair on the
back piazza where she could admire the landscape and watch the cows and
sheep feeding upon the hill-sides. A honeysuckle swung in the breeze
above her head, and little chickens, not big enough to do harm to
grandma's flower-beds, ran to and fro in the knot-grass, hunting for
little shiny green bugs, and fluttering and peeping in a way that was
very interesting to Lily-toes. No baby could be more comfortably
situated on a hot summer day; at least, so her mamma thought, as she
tied Lily-toes securely in her chair with a soft scarf, and went back to
the sitting-room and the busy sewing and talking with her dear old
girlhood friends. I presume if Lily-toes had been a first baby, her
mamma would have hesitated about leaving her there. She would have
feared--may be--that the chickens would eat her up or that she might
swallow the paper-weight. As it was, she only kissed the little thing
with a sort of mechanical smack and left her alone, a