Aunty Rose remained, apparently, as austere as ever, while Joseph Stagg was quite as much immersed in business as formerly. Yet there were times, when she and the child were alone, that Mrs. Kennedy unbent, in a greater or less degree. And on the part of Joseph Stagg, he found himself thinking of sunny-haired, blue-eyed “Hannah’s Car’lyn” with increasing frequency. “Didn’t you ever have any little girls, Aunty Rose?” Carolyn May asked the housekeeper on one of these intimate occasions. “Or little boys? I mean of your very own.” “Yes,” said Aunty Rose in a matter-of-fact tone. “Three. But only to have them in my arms for a very little while. Each died soon after coming to me. There was something quite wrong with them all, so the doctors said.” “Oh, my dear! All three of them?” sighed Carolyn May. “Two girls and a boy. Only one lived to be three months old. They are all buried behind the church yonder. My husband, Frank Kennedy, was not one of us. I married out of Meeting.” The little girl knew that she meant her husband, long since dead, had not been a member of the congregation of Friends. She leaned against Mrs. Kennedy’s chair and tucked what was meant to be a comforting hand into that of Aunty Rose. “Now I know something about you,” Carolyn May said softly. “What is that?” asked the woman, her eyes smiling at the child if her lips did not. “I know why it is you don’t know just how to cuddle little girls and show ’em how much you love ’em. _All_ little children, I mean—not only me.” Aunty Rose looked down at her with unchanging countenance, but Carolyn May looked fearlessly up into the woman’s face. No amount of grimness there could trouble the child now. For she knew something else about Aunty Rose. The housekeeper loved her! “Yes, you didn’t have your little babies long enough to learn how to cuddle and snug ’em up. That’s it. You ought to learn, Aunty Rose.” “What for?” asked Aunty Rose Kennedy rather sharply. “Why! so you could take me up into your lap and hug and kiss me—just as my mamma used to do.” “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, I guess, Car’lyn May,” said Aunty Rose. “Seems to me too much hugging spoils children.” “Oh, no, indeed!” cried the little girl confidently. “Never! My papa used to snug me up lots. Do you know what he used to call me?” “No.” “It was just for fun, you know. Just a pet name. Snuggy. He ’most always called me that. ’Cause I liked to be snuggled up.” Aunty Rose made no rejoinder. The next morning early Carolyn May, with Prince, went over into the churchyard and found the three little stones in a row. She knew they must be the right ones, for there was a bigger stone, with the inscription, “Frank Kennedy, beloved spouse of Rose Kennedy,” upon it. “Spouse” puzzled the little girl at first, but she felt timid about asking Aunty Rose about it.