“No, but I have a father—an only father. You know what _that_ is, I suppose; only fathers are a great deal of care. Mine needs a lot of looking after.” “Well, I’ll tell you,” suggested the rector. “I’ll lend you my grandmother once in a while! That is, if you will come over and help me occasionally, I will. I hope you’ll have the time to come. You don’t have to look after your father every minute, do you?” “Oh, no,” she replied. “He’s away a good deal. But I think I ought to see her before I borrow her, don’t you?” “Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the rector again. “If you’ll come into the house I’ll call her, and my aunts, too. I’m so glad you don’t mind their not being my wife and daughters.” He held open for her the door of the little parlor, and was starting toward the stairs when Miss Torrington called: “Oh—er—!” When the rector turned toward her she said: “I’d like to send up my cards, please. I don’t often get a chance to use them, you know, and—” The rector said, gravely: “I quite understand. I ought to have thought of it. I never send my own cards up to them, and I suppose that’s why I forgot.” He was about to take them in his hand, but Miss Torrington drew them back. “Maggie O’Brien always takes them on a silver tray. I’m very partic’lar about it at my house.” The rectory owned no silver tray, but there was a silver butter-dish, a valued family heirloom, much too large and fine for every-day use. It was kept on the sideboard in the tiny dining-room. The rector gravely brought it; Miss Torrington seemed quite satisfied, even a little awed at its elegance, and deposited her cards upon it. That was the way her first visit began; it ended in ginger cookies, and hugs and kisses from the grandmother, and tremulous tears, mixed with laughter, from the aunts. On the second visit she went all over the little place with the rector; together they hunted for eggs—the younger aunt owned four hens and a rooster. They plucked delicious red strawberries, and gathered a bunch of red roses. There were two acres of greenhouses on the grounds of the big house—but these were really, truly roses, roses meant to be gathered. On her third visit she made herself at home, and from that day she owned the rectory, the grandmother, the aunts, and the rector. In everything but years he was as young as she, and sometimes she was as old as he. All through the summer they played together, for the child blossomed into rosiness, and her father came to rely more and more on the advice of the aunts and the borrowed grandmother concerning her. She flitted between the two houses, and that was the way she won her name. The young rector would say: “Come, little Ladybird, fly away home”—and home was on either side of the hedge. The name stayed with her always, for it suited her well—the black-eyed little elf-child in her red frocks.