clean and quiet and a girl with the sweetest face I ever
saw lay in the bed with her eyes bright with pride and a tiny, tiny
little bundle close beside her. The young farmer was red with
embarrassment and anxiety.

"She's all right to-day, but she worries because she don't think I can
tend to the baby right," he said; and he did look helpless. "Her mother
had to go home for two days, but is coming to-morrow. I dasn't undress
and wash the youngster myself. It won't hurt him to stay bundled up
until granny comes, will it, Doc?"

"Not a bit," answered Doctor John in his big comforting voice.

But I looked at the girl and I understood her. She wanted that baby
clean and fresh even if it was just five days old, and I felt all of a
sudden terribly capable. I picked up the bundle and went into the other
room with it where a kettle was boiling on the stove and a large bucket
by the door. I found things by just a glance from her, and the hour I
spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my life.
I never was left entirely to myself with one before and I did all I
wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right
through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back on
the bed by her. I never looked in Doctor John's direction once, though
I felt him all the time.

But on the way home I gave myself the surprise of my life! Suddenly
I turned my face against his sleeve and cried as I never had before.
I felt safe, for it is a cliff road and he had to drive carefully.
However, he managed to press that one arm against my cheek in a way that
comforted me into stopping when I saw we were near town. I got out of
the car at the garage and walked away through the garden home without
looking in his direction at all. I never seem to be able to look at him
as I do at other people. We hadn't spoken two words since we had left
the little house in the woods with that happy-faced girl in it. He has
more sense than just a man.

It was almost dusk and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the dirt
closer around some of the bachelor's-buttons that had "popped" the
ground some weeks ago. Thinking about them made me regain my spirits and
I went on in the house to be scolded for whatever Aunt Adeline had
thought up while I was gone to do it to me about. Judy told me with her
broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law's for supper
and I sat down on the steps with a sigh of relief