The child let himself down from his seat and ran toward the lady, his bright eyes flashing, his hands extended, and his soft brown curls all afloat. “Mammy, mammy, take me,” he cried, making ineffectual leaps to reach her arms. The lady turned her face—a beautiful face, in nothing like Mary Margaret’s, save that it was bright with kindly surprise. The child dropped his eager hands with a look of pitiful disappointment that touched her to the soul. “Who is this?” she said, as the little creature crept, broken-hearted, back to hide himself among the other children. “Tell me, what poor child is this that mistakes me for his mother?” She blushed as she spoke, and turned her eyes shyly from the look of half interest, half of amusement which her husband turned upon her. “Come here, darling, let me talk with you,” she said, following the child. “Tell me your name.” She held out her arms, smiling, and with a glow upon her face, “Come!” The boy glanced upward to her face. His eyes filled with light; his lips parted, and eying her with the shy look which we meet in a frightened rabbit, he held up his arms, laughing for the first time in weeks. The lady snatched him eagerly to her bosom. In an instant his arms wreathed themselves lovingly around her neck, and his cheek lay against hers. “Strange, isn’t it, that he should take to me so suddenly?” she said, pressing the pretty face closer to hers, and giving it a sidelong kiss. “Isn’t he pretty?” “Yes, and no?” answered the husband, laughing. “He would be a little heathen if he did not take to you; and he is beautiful as one of Raphael’s cherubs.” “And so loving,” rejoined the wife, with a pleading glance. “What a pity to leave him here!” The husband looked gravely from the lady to the child. In his heart he thought her like one of Raphael’s Madonnas, only no painted child was ever so lovingly beautiful as the orphan she held. “Couldn’t we?” pleaded the lady, softly with her lips, most eloquently with her eyes. “It is a serious business,” answered the husband, still gravely, and with a sort of sadness. “But we have none of our own, and our home is so large?” The cloud deepened on her husband’s face. “I know it,” he said; “this thought of adopting a child takes me painfully.” “He looks like me enough to pass for ours,” said the lady, blushing scarlet as the words left her lips. “I mean he has the same colored eyes and hair, and—and—” “Yes,” thought the gentleman, “they are alike; it would be a pity to disturb the picture.” How pleadingly his eyes look out from under those curls, the same rich brown, with a gleam of gold in it. How came the little fellow so like my wife? But he only said very seriously, “Put him down, Mattie, we will talk it over at home!” The lady saw that he was in earnest, and attempted to unwind the child’s arms from her neck. But the little fellow cried out,—