IS A MOCKER 223
XIX. THE THREE PEOPLE MEET AGAIN 242
XX. MRS. JENKINS' TOMMY 255
XXI. MIDNIGHT WORK 270
XXII. POOR PLINY 289
XXIII. JUDGMENTS 305
XXIV. A DOUBLE CRISIS 322
XXV. STEPS UPWARD 336
XXVI. THEODORE'S INSPIRATION 349
XXVII. DAWN AND DARKNESS 364
XXVIII. DEATH AND LIFE 383
XXIX. SOME MORE BABIES 398

THREE PEOPLE

CHAPTER I.

SOME BABIES.

"Tie the sash a very little looser, nurse, and give the loops a more
graceful fall; there--_so_. Now he's a beauty! every inch of him." And
Mrs. Hastings moved backward a few steps in order to get the full
effect.

A beauty he was, certainly; others beside his mother would have admitted
that. What baby fresh from a bath, and robed in the daintiest and most
perfect of baby toilets, with tightly curling rings of brown hair
covering the handsome head; with great sparkling, dancing blue eyes, and
laughing rosebud mouth; with hands and feet and body strung on invisible
wires, and quivering with life and glee, was ever other than a beauty?

The whole house was in commotion in honor of the fact that Master Pliny
L. Hastings, only son and heir of the great Pliny Hastings, Senior, of
Hastings' Hall, had "laughed and cried, and nodded and winked," through
the entire space of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights, and
actually reached the first anniversary of his birthday.

A remarkable boy was Pliny Hastings. He didn't know yet that his father
was a millionaire, but he must have surmised it, for, as far back as he
could remember, his bits of sleeves had been looped with real pearls;
rosewood and lace and silk and down had united to make his tiny bed; he
had bitten his first tooth through on a sphere of solid gold--and all
the wonderful and improbable contrivances for royal babyhood that could
be bought or imagined, met together in that grand house on the Avenue
for this treasured bit of humanity.

On this particular day baby was out in all his glory; he had made the
circuit of the great parlors, stopping on his way to be tossed toward
the ceiling, in the arms of