But still David hesitated. Then he came and stood close beside Dr. Lavendar. "Lookee here," he said tremulously, "_I'll_ call you Edward. I'd just as lieves as not." There was a full minute's silence. Then Dr. Lavendar said, "I thank you, David. That is a kind thought. But no; I like Dr. Lavendar as a name. So many boys and girls have called me that, that I'm fond of it. And I like to have you use it. But I'm much obliged to you, David. Now I guess we'll say good night. Hey?" The child's face cleared; he drew a deep breath as if he had accomplished something. Then he said good night, and trudged off to bed. Dr. Lavendar looked after him tenderly. CHAPTER X April brightened into May before David came to live at the Stuffed Animal House. Dr. Lavendar had his own reasons for the delay, which he did not share with anybody, but they resulted in a sort of intimacy, which Helena, eager for the child, could not refuse. "He needs clothes," Dr. Lavendar put her off; "I can't let him visit you till Mary gets his wardrobe to rights." "Oh, let me get his little things." --Now, who would have supposed that Dr. Lavendar was so deep! To begin with, he was a man, and an old man, at that; and with never a chick or a child of his own. How did he know what a child's little clothes are to a woman?--"Well," he said, "suppose you make him a set of night-drawers." Helena's face fell. "I don't know how to sew. I thought I could buy what he needed." "No; he has enough bought things, but if you will be so kind, my dear, as to make--" "I will!" she promised, eagerly, and Dr. Lavendar said he would bring David up to be measured. Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and happiness; it brought Dr. Lavendar and David up to the Stuffed Animal House very often, "to try on." David's coming was always a delight, but the old man fretted her, somehow;--he was so good. She said so to William King, who laughed at the humor of a good woman's objection to goodness. The incongruity of such a remark from her lips was as amusing as a child's innocently base comment. [Illustration: Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and happiness. _Awakening of Helena Richie_] William had fallen into the habit of drawing up and calling out "good morning" whenever he and his mare passed her gate. Mrs. Richie's lack of common sense seemed to delight the sensible William. When he was with her, he was in the frame of mind that finds everything a joke. It was a demand for the eternal child in her, to which, involuntarily, she responded. She laughed at him, and even teased him about his shabby buggy with a gayety that made him tingle with pleasure. She used to wonder at herself as she did it--conscious and uneasy, and resolving every time that she would not do it again. She had none of this lightness with any one else. With Dr. Lavendar she was reserved to the point of coldness, and with young Sam Wright, matter-of-fact to a discouraging degree.