t it from his mind until, one evening,
his pipe persuaded him to erect a font in the temple of his imagination.

He mused through all the ritual, and the little frame house seemed to
thrill as the vague preacher enounced the sonorous phrase:

"I baptize thee Eric--in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost."

Marthy was there, too, of course, but it was the father that held the
baby. And the child did not wince when the pastor's fingers moistened
the tiny brow. He just clasped a geranium-petal hand round Rudd's thumb
and stared at the sacrament with eyes of more than mortal understanding.

The very next day Mrs. Ad. Peck walked into the store, proud as a
peahen. She wanted shoes for her baby. The soles of the old pair were
intact, but the stubby toes were protruding.

"He crawls all over the house, Mr. Rudd! And he cut his first tooth
to-day, too. Just look at it. Ain't it a beauty?"

In her insensate conceit she pried the child's mouth apart as if he were
a pony, to disclose the minute peak of ivory. It was nothing to make
such a fuss over, Rudd thought, though he praised it as if it were a
snow-capped Fuji-yama.

That night Eric cut two teeth. And Marthy nearly laughed her head off.

Rudd did not talk aloud to the family he had revened from the grave. He
had no occult persuasions. He just sat in his rocker and smoked hard and
imagined hard. He imagined the lives of his family not only as they
might have been, but as they ought to have been. He was like a spectator
at a play, mingling belief and make-belief inextricably, knowing it all
untrue, yet weeping, laughing, thrilling as if it were the very image of
fact.

All mothers and some fathers have a sad little calendar in their hearts'
cupboards where they keep track of the things that might have been.
"October fifth," they muse. "Why, it's Ned's birthday! He'd have been
twenty-one to-day if he'd lived. He'd have voted this year. December
twenty-third? Alice would have been coming home from boarding-school
to-day if--July fourth? Humph! How Harry loved the fireworks! But he'd
be a Senator now and invited to his home town to make a speech in the
park to-day if--" If! If!

Everybody must keep some such if-almanac, some such diary of prayers
denied. That was all Rudd did; only he wrote it up every evening. He
would take from the lavender where he kept them the little things Martha
had sewed for the child and the little shoes he had bought.