rt of thing."

"That's worth rememberin'," says I. "And I expect you wouldn't mind, in
case you had a boy to name later on, callin' him Torchy, eh!"

Mr. Robert grins. "Entry withdrawn," says he.

How this Amelia Gaston Leroy got the call to crash in on our little
family affair, though, I couldn't quite dope out. We never suspected
before that she was such an intimate friend of ours. Course, since we'd
been livin' out in the Piping Rock section we had seen more or less of
her--more, as a rule. She was built that way.

Oh, yes. Amelia was one of the kind that could bounce in among three or
four people in a thirty by forty-five living-room and make the place
seem crowded. Mr. Robert's favorite description of her was that one half
of Amelia didn't know how the other half lived. To state it plain,
Amelia was some whale of a girl. One look at her, and you did no more
guessin' as to what caused the food shortage.

I got the shock of my life, too, when they told me she was the one that
wrote so much of this mushy magazine poetry you see printed. For all the
lady poetesses I'd ever seen had been thin, shingled-chested parties
with mud-colored hair and soulful eyes.

There was nothing thin about Amelia. Her eyes might have been soulful
enough at times, but mostly I'd seen 'em fixed on a tray of sandwiches
or a plate of layer cake.

They'd had her up at the Ellinses' once or twice when they were givin'
one of their musical evenin's, and she'd spouted some of her stuff.

Her first call on us, though, was when she blew in last Sunday afternoon
and announced that she'd come to see "that dear, darling man child" of
ours. And for a girl of her size Amelia is some breeze, take it from me.
Honest, for the first ten minutes or so there I felt like our happy
little home had been hit by a young tornado.

"Where is he?" she demands. "Please take me at once into the regal
presence of his youthful majesty."

I noticed Vee sizin' her up panicky, and I knew she was thinkin' of what
might happen to them spindle-legged white chairs in the nursery.

"How nice of you to want to see him!" says Vee. "But let me have Baby
brought down here. Just a moment."

And she steers her towards a solid built davenport that we'd been
meanin' to have reupholstered anyway. Then we was treated to a line of
high-brow gush as Amelia inspects the youngster through her shell
lorgnette and tries to tell us in impromptu blank verse how wonderful he
is.

"A