Flora enjoyed that experience so much that she bought another hat which she described as “unmade.” Ribbons of gay colors, and white lace, and little silk flowers of various hues, came with it, and the child was given these materials to experiment with as she pleased. Flora gave advice, and was ready with assistance. Again the result was interesting. Bonnie May experienced a joy which was rapt, almost tremulous in quality. A desert-bred bird, coming upon an oasis, might have regarded its surroundings with the same incredulous rapture. Baron’s room became hers permanently, and here she developed a keen delight in “housekeeping.” Here also she received Mrs. Baron and Flora as guests, and amazed them by her performance of the part of hostess. “I call it nonsense,” declared Mrs. Baron to Flora, after the two had paid a formal call. But her face was flushed with happiness and her voice was unwontedly soft. “Not nonsense,” responded Flora; “it’s just happiness.” She spent whole afternoons with Mrs. Shepard in the kitchen and dining-room. She learned how to bake little cakes. It became her duty--by her own request--to set the table, and upon this task she expended the most earnest thought. Baron commented upon this on one occasion. “Ah, you’re not an artist, after all. You’re a Gretchen,” he said. “But everything about the table is so pretty and nice,” she responded. “It’s as elegant as a table in a play, and ever so much more sensible. You know something always happens when you sit down to a table on the stage. A servant comes in and says: ‘Beg pardon, mum, but there’s a gentleman--he says he’s your uncle from Green Bay’--and then everybody gets up in a hurry, because the uncle is supposed to believe his niece has a lot of children he’s been helping to support, when she hasn’t got any at all. Or something like that.” In brief, there were a hundred accumulating evidences to prove that Bonnie May in the Baron household was the right individual in the right place. It is true that Mrs. Baron did not forget how Thornburg had called on a certain night to take the child away, and how she had given him to understand--she supposed--that she would expect him back on the same errand some other time. And Baron could not free his mind of the fact that he had voluntarily entered into a compact by which his guest must sooner or later be lost to the household at least a part of the time. But these were matters which were not discussed in the family. A week passed--two weeks, and Baron hadn’t seen Thornburg or communicated with him. One day in June the thermometer shot up in real midsummer fashion, and the audiences in most of the theatres were such that all the shrewd managers became listless and absent-minded. The “regular season” was over.