“_She’s_ hunting for her child! No, _found_ it, I reckon. Lord, how she’s changed! But I recognized her in a minute, though it’s twenty-seven years since I saw her. A young mother she was, about twenty two or four, or along there; and blooming and lovely and sweet? oh, just a flower! And all her heart and all her soul was wrapped up in her child, her little girl, two years old. And it died, and she went wild with grief, just wild! Well, the only comfort she had was that she’d see her child again, in heaven—‘never more to part,’ she said, and kept on saying it over and over, ‘never more to part.’ And the words made her happy; yes, they did; they made her joyful, and when I was dying, twenty-seven years ago, she told me to find her child the first thing, and say she was coming—‘soon, soon, _very_ soon, she hoped and believed!’” “Why, it’s pitiful, Sandy.” He didn’t say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground, thinking. Then he says, kind of mournful: “And now she’s come!” “Well? Go on.” “Stormfield, maybe she hasn’t found the child, but _I_ think she has. Looks so to me. I’ve seen cases before. You see, she’s kept that child in her head just the same as it was when she jounced it in her arms a little chubby thing. But here it didn’t elect to _stay_ a child. No, it elected to grow up, which it did. And in these twenty-seven years it has learned all the deep scientific learning there is to learn, and is studying and studying and learning and learning more and more, all the time, and don’t give a damn for anything _but_ learning; just learning, and discussing gigantic problems with people like herself.” “Well?” “Stormfield, don’t you see? Her mother knows _cranberries_, and how to tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and not another blamed thing! Her and her daughter can’t be any more company for each other _now_ than mud turtle and bird o’ paradise. Poor thing, she was looking for a baby to jounce; _I_ think she’s struck a disapp’intment.” “Sandy, what will they do—stay unhappy forever in heaven?” “No, they’ll come together and get adjusted by and by. But not this year, and not next. By and by.” CHAPTER II I had been having considerable trouble with my wings. The day after I helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was not lucky. First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman and brought him down—brought us both down, in fact. Next, I had a collision with a Bishop—and bowled him down, of course. We had some sharp words, and I felt pretty cheap, to come banging into a grave old person like that, with a million strangers looking on and smiling to themselves.