Anna betook herself to the porch. Understanding had come to her. Poor Mr. Langley! He, too, had played with the vision of the golden-haired little daughter; all these years he had kept himself young with the image of his little girl in his heart. Most likely he hadn’t thought of her as of any particular age--just a darling little girl. But now, since last Sunday,--since Wednesday, indeed, some idiot had reminded him that she would have been a grown-up young lady at this time. Anna could fairly see him shrinking, cowering before the appalling fact. Then he had taken a great leap headlong to overtake a daughter twenty-five years old! What a pity! What a calamity, indeed! How would he ever get through the remainder of his life with his poor heart all flattened out and his vision forever shattered? But no one could bring the baby back nor could anyone halt or turn back the revolving years. Everything moved relentlessly on towards old age excepting that little marble lamb that would remain just three days old to the end of time. But the marble lamb recalled Mrs. Langley, and suddenly Anna seemed to see a ray of light. Mrs. Langley had been dead to the minister almost as long as the baby, and yet she wasn’t hopelessly dead. Suppose she were to be restored to him? There must have been something very dear about one who had insisted upon the little symbolic image’s being copied from a baby lamb just three days old, and if she still kept the photograph beside her in her loneliness and pain, she must herself be a lovely creature with the added saintliness of the years of patient suffering. If she could be restored to Mr. Langley, a sweet girl-wife, would not the weight of years that had suddenly pounced down upon him take instant flight? One was always hearing of people who had been bed-ridden for years getting well, and Mrs. Langley wasn’t so bad as bed-ridden. ‘Neuralagy’ and sleeplessness and headache and the like were what ailed her, and youth saw no reason why these should not be speedily banished. Quite likely it might have been put through long since had anyone taken the matter in hand. Anna grinned as she said to herself she would now be Charley on-the-spot. Mr. Langley had been goodness itself to Rusty and their father--to all the family, indeed. He was putting Rusty through college. Her mother and the boys worshipped him; and Anna herself really owed him most of all. For she had deserted her family for five years, coming back to find a quite different and to her ideal home, a changed father and mother and a wonderful sister--and all through Mr. Langley. In any case, Anna said to herself she would have wanted to do what she was going to do (she didn’t know how or even exactly _what_ as yet); but as it was, she simply _had_ to do it. That evening when she and Miss Penny were having their tea, Miss Penny asked her how she happened to be thinking of Ella May that day.