o," she added, "Old Chester need have no
further anxiety about Lydia's poverty. Their names? Oh--Smith."

She had the presence of mind to tell Lydia she had named the baby, and
though Miss Lydia gave a little start--for she had thought of some more
distinguished name for her charge--"Smith," and the Western parents and
the carriage accident passed into history.

CHAPTER II

DURING the first year that the "Smith" baby lived outside the brick wall
of Mr. Smith's place, the iron gates of the driveway were not opened,
because business obliged Mr. Smith to be in Europe. (Oh, said Old
Chester, so that was why Mary's wedding had to be hurried up?) When he
returned to his native land he never, as he drove past, looked at the
youngster playing in Miss Lydia's dooryard. Then once Johnny (he was
three years old) ran after his ball almost under the feet of the Smith
horses, and as he was pulled from between the wheels his grandfather
couldn't help seeing him.

"Don't do that tomfool thing again!" the old man shouted, and Johnny,
clasping his recovered ball, grinned at him.

"He sinks Johnny 'f'aid," the little fellow told Miss Lydia.

A month or two afterward Johnny threw a stone at the victoria and
involuntarily Mr. Smith glanced in the direction from which it came.
But, of course, human nature being like story books, he did finally
notice his grandson. At intervals he spoke to Miss Lydia, and when
Johnny was six years old he even stopped one day long enough to give the
child a quarter. Mr. Smith had aged very much after his daughter's
marriage--and no wonder, Old Chester said, for he must be lonely in that
big house, and Mary never coming to see him! Such behavior on the part
of a daughter puzzled Old Chester. We couldn't understand it--unless it
was that Mr. Smith didn't get along with his son-in-law? And Mary, of
course, didn't visit her father because a dutiful wife always agrees
with her husband! A sentiment which places Old Chester chronologically.

The day that Mr. Smith bestowed the quarter upon his grandson he spoke
of his daughter's "dutifulness" to Miss Lydia. Driving toward his house,
he overtook two trudging figures, passed them by a rod or two, then
called to the coachman to stop. "I'll walk," he said, briefly, and
waited, in the dust of his receding carriage until Miss Lydia and her
boy reached him. Johnny was trudging along, pulling his express wagon,
which was full of apples picked up on the path be