Dan, at the head of the table, held forth in the immemorial manner of young fathers: the baby had laughed his first laugh that very morning;—Dan was sure it was neither an illusion of his own nor a chance configuration of the baby’s features. It was absolutely an actual human laugh, although at first the astounded parent hadn’t been able to believe it, because he’d never heard of any baby’s laughing when it was only a month old. But when Henry Daniel laughed not once, but twice, and moreover went on laughing for certainly as long as thirty-five seconds, the fact was proven and no longer to be doubted. “No, sir, I just had to believe my own eyes when he kept right _on_ laughin’ up at me that way, as if he thought I was a mighty funny lookin’ old thing to be his daddy. My, but it does seem like a miracle to have your son look up at you that way and laugh! I hope he’ll keep doin’ it his whole life long, too. I’m certainly goin’ to do all _I_ can to keep him from ever havin’ anything happen he can’t laugh at!” He continued, becoming jovially oratorical upon his theme, while down at the other end of the long table, sitting between the baby’s grandfather and grandmother, Lena now and then gave him a half-veiled, quick glance that a chance observer might have defined as inscrutable. Her pretty black-and-white dress of fluffy chiffon was designed with a more revealing coquetry than the times sanctioned; so that her amiable father-in-law, though not himself conscious of any disapproval, withheld from expression his thought that it was just as well that Mrs. Savage could not be of the company. The ruthless old lady might have supplemented her “lesson” to Lena, although it had produced somewhat pointedly the reverse of its intended effect. The young mother was “painted” more dashingly than the bride had been, and her lips as well as her cheeks were made so vivid that probably her friends in New York would have found her more than ever the French doll—a discontented French doll, they might have said. Yet, to her credit, if she was discontented, she made an effort not to seem so; she chattered gayly to her mother-in-law and Mr. Oliphant, laughed with them about Dan’s bragging of his offspring, and coquetted demurely with one or two elderly cousins-in-law. A young one, Mr. Frederic Oliphant, seemed genuinely to amuse her, which was what led to misfortune. He found her laughter a sweet fluting in his ears, and, wishing to hear more of it, elaborated the solemn-mannered waggeries that produced it. “It’s a great thing to be the only father in the world,” he said. “I suppose it’s even greater than being an earl.” “Why than an earl particularly?” she asked.