rstood that she
had not expressed it. Thoughts are certainly able to spread themselves
without the aid of looks or language. Invisible seed that floats from
the parent plant can root itself wherever it settles and thoughts must
have some medium through which they sail till they reach minds that can
take them in, and there they strike root, and whole crops of the same
sort come up, just as if they were indigenous, and naturally belonging
to their entertainers. This is even more true in great matters than in
small.

Miss Fairbairn, as usual when she saw John, became gracious. John was
thought to be a very intellectual man; she was intellectual, and meant
to be more so. John was specially fond of his children; her talk
concerning children should be both wise and kind.

Real love of children and childhood is, however, a quality that no one
can successfully feign. John had occasionally been seen, by observant
matrons and maids, to attempt with a certain uncouth tenderness to do
his children womanly service. He could tie their bonnet-strings and
sashes when these came undone. They had been known to apply to him
during a walk to take stones out of their boots, and also to lace these
up again.

Why should we write of children as if they were just like grown-up
people? They are not in the least like, any more than they are like one
another; but here they are, and if we can neither love nor understand
them, woe betide us!

"No more crying, my dear," John had said that morning to his youngest
daughter.

He had just administered a reproof to her as he sat at breakfast, for
some infantile delinquency; and she, sniffing and sobbing piteously,
testified a desire to kiss him in token of penitence.

"I'm good now," she remarked.

"Where's your pocket-handkerchief?" said her father, with magisterial
dignity.

The infant replied that she had lost it, and straightway asked to borrow
his.

John lent the article, and having made use of it, she pushed it back
with all good faith into his breast-pocket, and repeating, "I'm good
now," received the coveted kiss, and presently after a donation of
buttered toast, upon which she became as happy as ever.

In ordinary life it devolves on the mother to lend a handkerchief; but
if children have none, there are fathers who can rise to such occasions,
and not feel afterwards as if heroic sacrifices had been demanded of
them.

John Mortimer felt that Miss Fairbairn had never before greeted