“Well,” said he under his breath, “the poor little thrush—the little storm-blown thrush!” And then he rushed away, because he felt a great need upon him, which was to tell his wife Barbara what had happened. It was nothing less than a pain to him to know anything that Barbara did not know. So he emptied his arms of the wood, and dashed back to the bedroom. “Come!” he commanded. “Come!” His greenish eyes were shining with the loving light that was almost always to be seen in them, his face, as quick with expressions as an actor’s, was literally beaming, and he was gesticulating with his large hands. “Just come, mamma, quick,” he pleaded. “Please don’t stop to do your hair.” “Me go too! Me go too!” piped the insistent, high-pitched voice of the young person in the cradle. So without more ado, the Rev. Absalom gathered his son in his arms, and the three Summers made an excursion to the back porch. There they stood—at least there two of them stood, and there the third, safe under his dad’s arm, wriggled—and looked at the little forlorn, sleeping beauty. Then, because Mrs. Barbara had a way of finding the right word, she sighed happily: “How winsome!” And then “How forlorn!” “Clean beat out,” agreed the Rev. Absalom. Barbara put a finger on her lips. “Let her sleep,” she said. “She shall sleep as long as she can, and after that, we’ll see what’s to be done. Best lock the shed door, dear, so she can’t get away without our knowing it. She might be frightened, you know.” Her husband smiled his broadest smile. “I don’t believe she’d be very much frightened,” he said. “She’s got too much sense. Now, if I was lost, or had run away from home, I’d never have the sense to nose out a bed and get into it. Not I. I’d be lying out in the rain groaning and sighing.” “Yes, I see you groaning and sighing,” retorted his wife, pinching his arm as she took the baby from him. “You’d take a crowbar and break in the front door of the first house you came to, and then you’d bless all the people in the house and crawl in the best bed and go to sleep.” She ran with the baby in her arms, away from his pretended anger, and he turned his attention once more to the kitchen fire, singing under his breath: “And though this world with demons filled, Should threaten to undo-oo-oo us—” The world might be filled with demons, but it was quite evident that they had not succeeded in breaking into the house of the Rev. Absalom Summers. They had not put their clutches on his little brown wife nor on his golden-haired baby son. They were not in the bright little kitchen, where she hastily prepared the morning meal, and they did not sit down at the table with the family while the head of the house said grace in clear and decisive tones which could leave no chance for any inattention on the part of Providence.