"It's his curse," I admitted. "If he weren't an A No. 1 dreamer, he'd be
too serious to live, but be goes dreaming and maundering along--dreaming
that things are about as he would like to have them. He sees your face
and Miss Lansdale's, and then they get mixed up in a queer way, and Miss
Kate's face comes out of the picture with such a look in the eyes that a
man of ordinary spirit would call her 'Little Miss' right off without
ever stopping to think; but of course this Fatty or Horsehead or
whatever it is can't say it right out, so he says it to himself about
twenty-three or twenty-four thousand times a day, as nearly as he can
reckon--he always was weak in arithmetic."

"You might let him write in _your_ autograph album," said the woman
child, brightly, to Miss Lansdale.

"I know what he'd write if he got the chance," I added incitingly. But
it did not avail. Miss Lansdale remained incurious and merely said,
"Long golden braids," as one trying to picture them.

"And later a little row of curls over each ear, and a tiny chain with a
locket around the neck. I had a picture once--"

"You have had many pictures."

"Yes--two are many if you've had nothing else."

But she was now regarding the woman child with a curious, close look,
almost troubled in its intensity.

"Do you look like your mother?" she asked.

"Papa says I do, and Uncle Maje thinks so too. She was very pretty,"
This came with an unconscious placidity.

"She looks almost as her mother's picture did," I said.

When the child had gone, Miss Lansdale searched my face long before
speaking. She seemed to hesitate for words, and at length to speak of
other matters than those which might have perplexed her.

"Why did they call you 'Horsehead'?" she asked almost kindly.

"I never asked. It seemed to be a common understanding. Doubtless there
was good reason for it, as good as there is for calling Budlow 'Fatty.'"

"What did you do?" she asked again.

"I went to the war with what I could take--nothing but a picture."

"And you lost that?"

"Yes--under peculiar circumstances. It seemed a kind thing to do at the
time."

"And you came back with--"

"_With yours, Little Miss!_"

Some excitement throbbed between us so that I had involuntarily
emphasized my words. Briefly her eyes clung to mine, and very slowly we
relaxed from that look.

"I only wanted to say," she began presently, "that I shall have to
believe your absurd tale of my picture be