With what a reverential pride he saw her filling the vacant place, diffusing a fragrance upon all around like the sweet, wet smell of a rose. He was a splendid horseman and crack shot, and it had been one of his pleasures to teach her to handle horse and gun. Together they would ride and hunt, and no day’s outing was perfect to him unless Dorothy was by his side. It was not surprising, therefore, to find her a little boyish in her fondness for sport. However, as she grew to womanhood, she sometimes, from a fancy that it was undignified, would decline to take part in these sports. But when he had started off alone with dogs and gun, the sound of running feet behind him would cause him to turn to find Dorothy with penitent face before him. Then lovingly encircling his neck with arms like stripped willow boughs, the repentant words: “I do want to go. I was only in fun,” would be a preface to a long day of delight. In time these little moods set him thinking, and he began to realize that their beautiful days of sporting comradeship were in a measure over. How he wished she might never outgrow this charm of childhood. Ah! those baby days, not far past! How often of nights the father went to her bedroom, just touching his child to find out if the covering was right and that she slept well. How many, many times had he leaned over her sleeping form in the dim night light, seeming to see a halo around her head as he watched the dimpling smile about her infant mouth, and, recalling the old nurse saying, that when a baby smiles, angels are whispering to it, took comfort in the thought that maybe it was all true, that the mother was soothing her child to deeper slumber, and so, perhaps, was also beside him. All unconsciously she had slept, never hearing the prayer to God that when the day should come when she would leave him for the man of her heart, death might claim his lone companionship. How it hurt when the neighbors would says “You have a grown daughter now,” or “Dorothy is a full fledged woman.” It was not until then that Mr. Carr had let his daughter know that it would almost break his heart if she should ever leave him for another. But he made absolutely no restrictions against her meeting young men. Of course this rare creature had sweethearts not a few, for the neighboring boys began to nourish a tender sentiment for her before she was out of short dresses. Her playmates were free of the house; their coming was always welcome to her and encouraged by her father though this past year, when a new visitor had found his way there, the father took particular note of her manner toward this possible suitor. The kind old eyes would follow her with pathetic eagerness, not reproaching or reproving, only always questioning: “Is this to be the man who shall open the new world’s doors for her; who shall give her the first glimpse of that wonderful joy called love?”