e gets into
Wandrell's family you might as well give up politics."

"Perhaps I might do that anyhow."

"Well, you are an odd man. I'll not dispute that. What you will do at
any given time I'll not try to prophesy."

The twain separate. However, of any two men in Chicago, perhaps David
Lockwin and Dr. Tarpion are most agreeable to each other. From boyhood
they have been familiar. If one has said to the other, "Do that!" it
has been done.

"I fear you cannot be spared from your other guests, Esther," says
Lockwin.

"I fear you are trying to escape to that dear doctor of yours. Now,
are you not?"

"No. I have been with him for half an hour already. Esther, you are a
fine-looking woman. Upon my honor, now--"

She will not tolerate it, yet she never looked so pleased before.

"Tell me," she says, "of your little boy."

"Of my foundling?"

"Yes, I love to hear you speak of him."

"Well, Esther, the truest thing I have heard of my boy was said by old
Richard Tarbelle. He stopped me the other day. You know our houses
adjoin. 'Mr. Lockwin,' said he, as he came home with his basket--he
goes to his son's hotel each day for family stores--'I often say to
Mary that the happiest moment in my day is when I give an apple or an
orange to your boy, for the look on that child's face is the nearest we
ever get to heaven on this earth."

"O, beautiful! beautiful! Mr. Lockwin."

"Yes, indeed, Esther. I took that little fellow three years ago. I
had no idea he would grow so pretty. Folks said it was the oddest of
pranks, but if I had bought fifteen more horses than I could use, or
dogs enough to craze the neighborhood, or even a parrot, like my good
neigbor Tarbelle, everybody would have been satisfied. Of course, I
had to take a house and keep a number of people for whom a bachelor has
no great need. But, Esther, when I go home there is framed in my
window the most welcome picture human eye has ever seen--that little
face, Esther!"

The man is enwrapped. The woman joins in the man's exaltation.

"He is the most beautiful child I have ever seen anywhere. It is the
talk of everybody. You are so proud of him when you ride together!"

"Esther, I have seen him in the morning when he came to rouse me--his
face as white as his gown; his golden hair long, and so fleecy that it
would stand all about his head; his mouth arched like the Indian's bow;
his great blue eyes bordered with dark brows and lashed with j