The dog had made a playful dive for the wheel of a baby go-cart that rolled across the path, and might have done it some damage with his strong teeth. The child halted the runaway cart and wheeled it back to the settee where it had stood, while Prince, his tongue a-loll and "smiling" broadly, watched both his mistress and the strange woman who sat on the bench with a baby in her lap. She was a very pale lady, and the baby did not seem well nourished, either. He had wide eyes now for the dog, putting out his little hands and cooing to Prince. "Thank you, my dear," the woman said sweetly; but she drew the baby back hastily from the approach of the dog. "Oh, don't be afraid of Princey, ma'am," urged the little girl. "He wouldn't hurt the baby. Why, Princey just _loves_ babies! Edna Price has a little baby brother. That's why Edna didn't come to walk with us today. She had to stay at home to mind Eldred. That's her baby's name. I think it's a very pretty name. Edna's mamma got it out of a moving picture. "Why," chattered on Prince's mistress, as the encouraged baby began gaily to maul the dog's head and cropped ears, "they put Eldred right down on the floor beside Princey, and the baby climbs all over him--and sometimes goes to sleep on him. Isn't that funny?" and her own laugh chimed out clearly. "And Prince behaves just as _goo-od_! He lies right there and blinks his eyes and won't even snap at a fly for fear of waking up the baby." "I see that your dog," said the pale lady, smiling, "is very intelligent, as well as kind." "Oh, yes, ma'am," the little girl agreed. "He's not only intelligent. He's quite interlectial. He knows lots more than other dogs." She was staring quite frankly at the pale lady, who had beautiful, heavy coils of golden-red hair upon her shapely head. Her neck, slim and graceful, seemed scarcely strong enough to hold the heavy head erect, and it drooped like a flower above the cooing baby. Had she not been so very, very thin and had she been granted some colour in her cheeks, the little girl thought the lady would be beautiful indeed. The baby was pretty, too, in a delicate, fragile way. The little girl was used to seeing sturdy, pink-cheeked, plump infants on her block--and she knew them all. This little man was nothing at all like Eldred Price, or Johnny O'Harrity's baby sister who lived in the basement of their house. It seemed to the little girl that if she were choosing a baby-- "Don't--don't you think you'd rather have a fatter baby?" she burst forth at last. A little colour rose into the mother's pale cheek, and she hugged the baby tighter for a moment. "Of course, I s'pose _some_-body's got to choose the thin babies, or they wouldn't have any homes at all. But if we ever find a baby--my mamma and I--I hope it will be a fat one." "We hope the little mannie will be big and fat and strong some day," said the pale lady, and managed to smile again.