At this moment a double laugh came down the stair. And he, down there, answered it. So that you will understand that John Estover, Friend and Overseer, and John Estover, Husband, were very different individuals. Upstairs it was hard to distinguish one from the other of these two pretty women—which was daughter, which mother—for they were locked in a laughing, weeping embrace, and the one was showing the other a long-necked, old-fashioned bottle, labelled “PATCHOULY.” Well, she was like her mother, and so, when I describe the one, you will see the other. The daintiest of retroussé noses, eyes entirely too large for her face, a mouth that _would_ smile her very thoughts—and sometimes, tell them—a curiously deep dimple in her chin. But for her attire no one would have thought her a subdued Quaker. Yet upon that even the little mother insisted. “First,” she said, “your father wishes it. Second, you will never be so pretty in anything else. Dearie, you make me think of a blush rose hidden in the heart of a lily every time I look into your bonnet. Think what a surprise that will be to your prince that day he comes! To look into the prim, gray bonnet and find—YOU!” And she kissed what she found there. “And, oh, my beloved, there are ways and ways! Men must be managed and women must be pretty—and both are possible—even in Quaker garments.” “My beloved!” cried the one. “My sweet Marian!” responded the other. Whereby you will know what even John Estover did not know concerning his wife and child—that they had changed the fearful name he had chosen, to the next best thing they could devise, and keep the faith. For, in her “management” of John Estover and his affairs, the little French woman kept so close to the thing he insisted upon, that when her innovations were discovered, as they sometimes were, they were considered venial instead of criminal—and this is just the difference between wisdom and folly. For, upon one occasion, when he had said: “What was that—Marian?” His little wife had answered: “Mary!—Ann!” making each a staccato note, and adding, “Will I never speak the English?” She spoke the language perfectly. III THE CALYXLIKE BONNET Now it was into this lily calyx that the unregenerate Doctor John Rem looked one day, with precisely the emotions which the mother of Mary Ann had foretold—though, of course, he had not time to formulate them with such beauty. It was only a moment. And he was bewildered. And the wonder of it was that he had found her with the wife of his friend Jarn, whom they both called Bell-Bell, for no better reason than that her name was Belle, and that she was the wisest and brightest and best of young wives and comrades—even though that does sound like a certain hymn. “In heaven’s name, Bell-Bell, what does it mean?” Mrs. Jarn became mysterious. “Little boys must be seen, not heard.”