Little enough, I should think, at first, save Justin’s vouchsafed interest. Justin, who was so absorbed by things that he seldom had time for people, had not forgotten Laura, had actually inquired after the child, twice, in letters, had carried her off, dumb with delight, on his next Sunday at home, to spend the afternoon in his den. Justin had talked: Mrs. Cloud had heard the rumble of his deep voice all the afternoon. Mrs. Cloud had a smile and a thanksgiving for her good son, tender as a girl to acknowledged pain or need. Yet, to me, it seems nevertheless certain that Laura had, from the first, the trick of keeping him amused. From the first, too, she must have had her shepherding way with him and his belongings; for Mrs. Cloud, announcing tea, hardly recognized Justin’s den—Justin’s housemaid-proof den. Laura would appear to have tidied it. At any rate, however they had passed their afternoon, they came down to dripping cake and muffins at last, hungry and very well-pleased with each other. Justin told his mother that Laura was a ripping little kid. What Laura told the Memory who still came to her in the night-time, who knows? Yet that that yearning shadow was eased, appeased, by what it heard, I do believe; because, as the months sped, its anxious visits lessened and grew rare, until, at last, it came no more to a Laura grown happy again. Justin, of course, was seldom at home, but you can see, with his open and unusual approval working upon Mrs. Cloud’s already aroused motherliness, how swift and steady would be her notice of Laura. It was in her nature to be kind, pitiful, easy. Her cheerful heart was like her cheerful house, with window-wide rooms, white and golden and domestic, filled with sunshine and flowers, with firelight and singing birds and kittens that never grew up. She had room in both for a child’s voice and a child’s ways, the more, perhaps, since the reserve her son shared would not, though she were lonely with Justin away, let her say easily to a stranger, “Come in—be at home!” But a child she could welcome.