He was pretty, but many little boys were pretty; he was quaint and amusing, but so are many scores. The difference between this one tiny individuality and others was that he seemed to have been born without sense of the existence of any barrier between his own innocent heart and any other. I think it had never occurred to him that any one could possibly be unfriendly or unloving to him. He was a perfectly human little thing, not a young cherub, but a rational baby, who made his frocks exceedingly dirty, and rejoiced sweetly in the making of mud pies. But, somehow, his radiant smile of belief in one’s sympathy, even with his mud pies, minimized the trouble of contending with the earthly features of him. His opinion evidently was that the world was made of people who loved him and smiled if they saw him, of things one could play with and stories one could listen to, and of friends and relations who were always ready to join in the play and tell the stories. He went peacefully to the curl-brushing ordeal, perhaps because of this confiding sureness that any hand that dealt with him would touch him tenderly. He never doubted it. One morning, before he was three years old, he trotted into the dining-room with a beautifully preoccupied expression, evidently on business thoughts intent. The breakfast was over, but his mamma was still sitting at the table, reading. She heard the tiny pattering of feet coming down the hall before he entered. She had thought him with his nurse, but he appeared to be returning from some unusual expedition to the front door, which, as it was a warm, early summer morning, stood open. She was always curious about his mental processes, and so, when he trotted to the table with his absorbed air, and stood upon his tiptoes, making serious efforts to gain possession of a long loaf of French bread, she regarded him with interest—he was so little, and the roll of bread was so long, and his intentions to do something practical with it were so evident. Somehow, one of his allurements was that he was always funny, and he was so purely because his small point of view was always so innocently serious. “What does mamma’s baby want?” she asked. He looked at her with an air of sweet good faith, and secured the bread, tucking it in all its dignity of proportion under the very shortest possible arm. “Lady,” he said, “lady, f’ont door—want b’ead,” and he trotted off, with a simple security in the sense of doing the right and only admissible thing, which it was reposeful to behold. His mamma left her book hurriedly and trotted after him. Such a quaint baby figure he was, with the long French roll under his arm! And he headed straight for the front door.