"I'm going to taste it." Celia tilted the spoon to her own lips and
sipped with appreciation. "Uncle Joel," she said thoughtfully, "if
you're afraid this'll spoil your appetite for supper, I'll eat it."

Again Joel chuckled. This made the third time in swift succession, and
practise was giving him surprising facility. But unwarned by past
experience, Mary put in her word. "Poor Mr. Dale hasn't eaten scarcely
a mouthful to-day, and here you've had bread and jelly since dinner."

Joel's unaccustomed smile was at once obscured. "Mary, a considerable
spell back a wise man said, 'Every fool will be meddling.' If you
aren't familiar with the author, Mary, it would pay you to read him."
Again he gave his attention to Celia. "We'll share this, turn and turn
about," he compromised. "First you have a spoonful and then me."

Mary withdrew unheeded. Though tremendously in awe of the impecunious
and futile Joel, Mary felt no sense of diffidence where the efficient
Persis was concerned, and at once went to find her. But Persis, who
sat in one of her new bay-windows, the baby on her knee, was
entertaining Mrs. West, while her benignantly maternal eyes watched
three children playing outside.

"I declare you could have knocked me down with a feather, Persis, when
I heard it," Mrs. West declared, her portliness rendering the figure of
speech extremely impressive. "I wouldn't have thought queer of one or
even two, but a whole family."

"A family's what I've always wanted," Persis returned with the
cheerfulness of a woman whose life-long dream has come true. "And if I
could have found enough of the sort I was after, I'm not sure I'd have
stopped short of a round dozen."

"It's a responsibility," sighed Mrs. West "They're kind of like
playthings to you now. You'll feel it later."

Persis looked at her with kind eyes. "I haven't added any new
responsibility in taking these children, Mis' West. It was there just
as soon as the money and leisure came to me, and I've made a start
toward meeting it, that's all. We don't make our responsibilities; we
just wake up to 'em."

"I must say you take to it like a duck to water," acknowledged Mrs.
West in conciliatory accents. "Some women are just as unhandy with a
baby as a man. Sophia Warren's one. Once or twice I've seen her
holding that Newell baby that lives next door, and she looked as stiff
and scared as if she was setting for her photograph."

She leaned forward to w