. Brenton, it's a boy."

Kathryn gave a start of indignation.

"Nurse, how stupid! Of course, it is a little girl."

But the nurse responded stolidly,--

"It aint, though; it's a boy."

Kathryn's eyes drooped wearily.

"Well, never mind about that now. There must be some mistake, though,
for my heart was set on having a little girl. Anyway, you can tell Mr.
Brenton it's all right. And now, nurse, I think I'll try to take a
nap."

"And shall I leave the baby, ma'am?"

Kathryn, already settling her cheek upon her hand, stirred wearily.

"Certainly not, nurse, if he's going to cry like that," she said, with
querulous decision.

That was late at night. Next morning, she aroused herself to some
slight show of interest as concerned the child.

"It's such a disappointment to have him a boy," she still lamented.
"Boys' clothes are so very ugly. However," lifting herself up upon her
elbow, she stared down at the puckered face in the nest of soft white
flannel; then she fell back again with a little shiver of disgust; "for
the matter of that, nurse, he's very ugly, too."

This time, the nurse felt herself justified in indignant remonstrance.
Indeed, in all her forty years of nursing, she never had been in
contact with a mother who was so unappreciative.

"Ugly, Mrs. Brenton!" Her voice gathered force and fervour, as she went
on. "How can you say so? He's a puffic' fibbous."

This time, however, the nurse's zeal outran discretion. "Fibbous" or
no, the baby certainly was red to a fault, his infant brow was crowned
with a rampant thatch of jet black hair, and no nonagenarian ever was
one half so wrinkled as this small stranger in the halls of time. Even
Scott Brenton, his heart thrilling and throbbing with the fearful new
joys of his paternity, experienced an unmistakable chill, when first he
gazed upon the countenance of his new-born son. Of course, he must be
beautiful. Every young baby is that, ex officio. Nevertheless, Scott
Brenton, looking at him, was fully conscious that he would become yet
more beautiful, once he had been bleached a little, to say nothing of
having had some of the puckers straightened out. And, besides, he was
so curiously invertebrate, had such a tendency to coil himself to the
likeness of a shrimp. In time, beyond a doubt, he would come out all
right. For the present moment, though, he was a trifle problematic in
his attractions.

"What shall we call him, Catie?" Scott asked her gently,