"I've seen a good many kinds o' mother-love--you do when you go round to houses like I do. But I never see anything like Calliope. Seems though she breathed that child for air. She always was one to pretend to herself, an' I knew well enough she'd figured it out as if this was _their_ child that might 'a' been, long ago. She sort o' played mother--like you will; an' she lived her play. He was a real sweet little fellow, too. He was one o' them big-eyed kind that don't laugh easy, an' he was well-spoken, an' wonderful self-settled for a child o' seven. He was always findin' time for you when you thought he was doin' somethin' else--slidin' up to you an' puttin' up his hand in yours when you thought he was playin' or asleep. An' that was what he done that night when we set on the porch--comes slippin' out of his little bed an' sets down between us on the top step, in his little night-things. "'Calvert, honey,' Calliope says, 'you must run back an' play dreams. Mother wants you to.' "She'd taught him to call her mother--she'd had him about six months then--an' some thought that was queer to do, seein' Calliope was her age an' all. But I thought it was wonderful right. "'I did play,' he says to her--he had a nice little way o' pressin' down hard with his voice on one word an' lettin' the next run off his tongue--'I did play dreams,' I rec'lect he says; 'I dreamed 'bout robbers. Ain't robbers _distinct_?' he says. "I didn't know what he meant till Calliope laughs an' says, 'Oh, distinctly extinct!' I remembered it by the way the words kind o' crackled. "By then he was lookin' up to the stars--his little mind always lit here an' there, like a grasshopper. "'How can heaven begin,' he says, 'till everybody gets there?' "Yes, he was a dear little chap. I like to think about him. An' I know when he says that, Calliope just put her arms around him, an' her head down, an' set sort o' rockin' back an' forth. An' she says:-- "'Oh, but I think it begins when we don't know.' "After a while she took him back to bed, little round face lookin' over her shoulder an' big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' little sort o' crooked frown, for all the world like the other Calvert Oldmoxon. Just as she come out an' set down again, we heard the click o' the gate acrost at the corner house where the New People lived, an' it was the New Husband got home. We see his wife's white dress get up to meet him, an' they went in the house together, an' we see 'em standin' by the lamp, lookin' at things. Seems though the whole night was sort o'--gentle. "All of a sudden Calliope unties her apron. "'Let's dress up,' she says. "'Dress up!' I says, laughin' some. 'Why, it must be goin' on half-past eight,' I told her. "'I don't care if it is,' she says; 'I'm goin' to dress up. It seems as though I must.'