Daisy was not pleased with his remark. “I’ll thank you not to be so kinely complimentary, Mister Laurence Coy!” she said, and she took up Willamilla in her arms, and rather staggeringly began to walk to and fro with her, singing: “Oh, my peshus litt-_tull_ bay-_hay_-bee-hee!” Elsie walked beside her, singing too, while Willamilla beat upon the air with desperate hands and feet, closed her effervescent eyes as tightly as she could, opened her mouth till the orifice appeared as the most part of her visage, and allowed the long-sustained and far-reaching ululations therefrom to issue. Laurence began to find his position intolerable. “For heavenses’ sakes!” he said. “If this keeps up much longer, _I_’m goin’ _home_. Everybody’s a-lookin’ at us all up an’ down the street! Whyn’t you quit singin’ an’ give him a chance to get over whatever’s the matter with him?” “Well, why don’t you do somep’m to help stop her from cryin’, yourself?” Elsie asked crossly. “Well, I will,” he promised, much too rashly. “I’d stop him in a minute if I had my way.” “All right,” Daisy said unexpectedly, halting with Willamilla just in front of him. “Go on an’ stop her, you know so much!” “He’ll stop when _I_ tell him to,” Laurence said, in the grim tone his father sometimes used, and with an air of power and determination, he rolled up the right sleeve of his shirtwaist, exposing the slender arm as far as the elbow. Then he shook his small fist in Willamilla’s face. “You quit your noise!” he said sternly. “You hush up! Hush up this minute! Hush _opp_!” Willamilla abated nothing. “Didn’t you hear me tell you to hush up?” Laurence asked her fiercely. “You goin’ to _do_ it?” And he shook his fist at her again. Upon this, Willamilla seemed vaguely to perceive something personal to herself in his gesture, and to direct her own flagellating arms as if to beat at his approaching fist. “Look out!” Laurence said threateningly. “Don’t you try any o’ that with _me_, Mister!” But the mulatto baby’s squirmings were now too much for Daisy; she staggered, and in fear of dropping the lively burden, suddenly thrust it into Laurence’s arms. “Here!” she gasped. “I’m ’most worn out! Take her!” “Oh, golly!” Laurence said. “Don’t _drop_ her!” both ladies screamed. “Put her back in the wagon.”