to the wide-open doors of her home. Then,
with a happy after-thought, turned on the mat, and held out her hands
to the new husband.

"Welcome--welcome to our home, dear," she said.

He grasped the hands tightly. "After all, I suppose I am a little more
to you than the child?" he asked.

She smiled a flattering affirmative; and at the instant there came a
scream in a child's voice from a room above, followed by an ominous
silence.

When the others reached the nursery from which as they knew, the sound
had come, the mother was already standing there, holding in her arms
the unconscious form of her little girl. From a tiny wound in the
child's white forehead drops of blood were oozing.

"I left her for one minute to fetch the water for her bath," the nurse
was saying, hurriedly excusing herself. "She was running up and down
and round about, calling, 'Daddy, come to Milly! Come, daddy, come!'"

"She fell and struck her head against the sharp corner of this stool,"
Major Walsh said. "Look, it has sharp corners."

The child was only unconscious for a minute. She opened her eyes,
smiled upon her mother, hid her face in her neck, and presently was
whispering a question again and again in her ear.

Mrs Walsh looked up in a bewildered fashion from the little hidden
face. "What does she say?" the grandmother asked.

"She says, 'Where is my daddy gone?'" the mother repeated, faltering a
little over the words, and with scared eyes.

"He is here," said the practical grandmother, and took Major Walsh by
the arm. "We have told her her daddy was coming with her mother," she
explained. "She was more excited about him even than about you,
Millicent. Look up! Here is your daddy, darling."

Slowly the child lifted her head from the mother's shoulder, and looked
at the big man with the hard face now stooping over her--looked for
half a second, shut her eyes again, and again hid her face.

"It isn't my daddy," she said, with a baby whimper, "Milly wants _my_
daddy that came and danced with Milly. Where's my daddy gone?"

Later, when the child had been put to bed, the mother, having hurriedly
dressed for dinner, knelt by the side of the crib to hold her daughter
in her arms; kissing the tiny wound upon her forehead, she asked how it
was she had managed so to hurt herself.

"My daddy came and danced. He whirled Milly round and round," the
little one said, grievingly. She knew nothing more of the occurrence;
it was the only exp