d gone to see her
washerwoman. She was slow about her marketing. She didn't dream he was
there. She was sorry, too, that her absence had lost her an
opportunity to serve him. It showed her what a mess she was likely to
make of it all.

It happened that about three weeks after the above occurrence
Lester had occasion to return to Cincinnati for a week, and during
this time Jennie again brought Vesta to the flat; for four days there
was the happiest goings on between the mother and child.

Nothing would have come of this little reunion had it not been for
an oversight on Jennie's part, the far-reaching effects of which she
could only afterward regret. This was the leaving of a little toy lamb
under the large leather divan in the front room, where Lester was wont
to lie and smoke. A little bell held by a thread of blue ribbon was
fastened about its neck, and this tinkled feebly whenever it was
shaken. Vesta, with the unaccountable freakishness of children had
deliberately dropped it behind the divan, an action which Jennie did
not notice at the time. When she gathered up the various playthings
after Vesta's departure she overlooked it entirely, and there it
rested, its innocent eyes still staring upon the sunlit regions of
toyland, when Lester returned.

That same evening, when he was lying on the divan, quietly enjoying
his cigar and his newspaper, he chanced to drop the former, fully
lighted. Wishing to recover it before it should do any damage, he
leaned over and looked under the divan. The cigar was not in sight, so
he rose and pulled the lounge out, a move which revealed to him the
little lamb still standing where Vesta had dropped it. He picked it
up, turning it over and over, and wondering how it had come there.

A lamb! It must belong to some neighbor's child in whom Jennie had
taken an interest, he thought. He would have to go and tease her about
this.

Accordingly he held the toy jovially before him, and, coming out
into the dining-room, where Jennie was working at the sideboard, he
exclaimed in a mock solemn voice, "Where did this come from?"

Jennie, who was totally unconscious of the existence of this
evidence of her duplicity, turned, and was instantly possessed with
the idea that he had suspected all and was about to visit his just
wrath upon her. Instantly the blood flamed in her cheeks and as
quickly left them.

"Why, why!" she stuttered, "it's a little toy I bought."

"I see it is," he returned