Bel had a knack with a baby. She knew enough to understand that small human beings have a good many feelings and experiences precisely like those of large ones. She knew that if _she_ woke up in the night, she should not be likely to fall asleep again if pulled up out of her bed into the cold; nor if she were very much patted and talked to. So she just took gently hold of the upper edge of the small, fine blanket in which Baby Karen was wrapped, and by it drew her quietly over upon her other side. The little limbs fell into a new place and sensation of rest, as larger limbs do; little Karen put off waking up and crying for one delicious instant, as anybody would; and in that instant sleep laid hold of her again. She was safe, now, for another hour or two, at least. Mrs. Scherman said she had really never had so little trouble with a baby as with this one, who had nobody especially appointed to make out her own necessity by constant "tending." Bel did not go down-stairs again. She could do better here than with Kate sitting opposite, aware of all her scratches and poetical predicaments. An hour went by. Bel was hardly equal yet to five-minute Crambo; and besides, she was doing her best; trying to put something clearly into syllables that said itself, unsyllabled, to her. She did not hear Mrs. Scherman when she came up the stairs. She had just read over to herself the five completed stanzas of her poem. It had really come. It was as if a violet had been born to actual bloom from the thought, the intangible vision of one. She wondered at the phrasing, marveling how those particular words had come and ranged themselves at her call. She did not know how she had done it, or whether she herself had done it at all. She began almost to think she must have read it before somewhere. Had she just picked it up out of her memory? Was it a borrowing, a mimicry, a patchwork? But it was very pretty, very sweet! It told her own feelings over to her, with more that she had not known she had felt or perceived. She read it again from beginning to end in a whisper. Her mouth was bright with a smile and her eyes with tears when she had ended. Asenath Scherman with her light step came in and stood beside her. "Won't you tell _me_?" the sweet, gracious voice demanded. Bel Bree looked up. "I thought I'd try, in fun," she said, "and it came in real earnest." Asenath forgot that the face turned up to hers, with the smile and the tears and the color in it, was the face of her hired servant. A lovely soul, all alight with thought and gladness, met her through it. She bent down and touched Bel's forehead with her lady-lips. Bel put the little scribbled paper in her hand, and ran away, up-stairs. "Will you give it to me, Bel, and let me do what I please with it?"--Mrs. Scherman went to Bel and asked next day.