It was a friend on a visit to her, who, when in the afternoon they hesitated in the choice of a drive, proposed Quarryville. Celia, though in the least degree repelled, could find no reason for setting aside the suggestion. But she regretted--yet again without good reason, as she argued with herself--having permitted just the sort of person this gifted and charming Mary Havens could not help being, to be present at her trying-on with Miss Greene. They had no difficulty in recognizing the house. The oleander stood beside the door-step in the rough front yard, where common flowers and flourishing weeds made about an even mixture. Among them toddled a child in a faded pink slip. As Celia reined in the horse that they might pass slowly, Mary Havens, before Celia knew what she intended, jumped out, and Celia saw her in a moment more, down in the tall grass, scrutinizing the child's face, and heard her foolish, eager chatter at him. Celia waited, with a misleading effect of patience, looking off at the meadows on the other side, in an unaccountable distaste, till she became aware of Mary trying to find footing for the child in front of her knees. "Look at him!" Mary said to her in an impressed tone, "Isn't he _different_?" Celia, in the supposition that any baby lifted off his feet by a stranger would scream, had braced her nerves for the shock. But as she looked at the child, she ceased to think of that, her displeasure with Mary dispersed. He was a being after her own heart, that was all,--exactly after her own heart. She had not the general love of children common in women, which seemed proof that this one who so captured her fancy must have about him something extraordinary. He was so fair that the sun to which he was indiscriminately exposed could not prevail against his firm, uniform, healthy whiteness. He was large for his small age,--for though he could walk, it was plain he could not yet talk, or else he did not regard language as necessary, for not by one sound did he depart from his self-possessed dumbness. The soilure of the earth upon it could not make his splendid little face funny. A straight-limbed, strong, calm, fearless, and somewhat solemn baby, noble in size, noble in the whole effect of him, with just a touch of something which melted the heart in his wide, sweet, steady, unsmiling eyes and the drooping arch of his lip. We have described him as he appeared to Celia. "He looks like a king," she breathed, "or like a prophet!" "That's just it--I couldn't define it. Think--think of rejecting a creature like that! Why--if he had been mine----" Celia was not listening. She had taken in hers one of his little strong, firm, white hands, beautiful in shape, in texture surpassing, and, quite absorbed in him, pressing it as earnestly as if she entered into a compact with him, was saying over to him just "Larry ... Larry ..." in her voice itself a communication and a caress.