“Are you going to the lecture?” Flossy, asked and the small lady shook her head, with a wistful air.

“Dear me, no!  My young tyrant wouldn’t consent to that.  I meant to take him down with me and try him, but he has gone to sleep; and it is just as well, for he would have been certain to want to do all the talking.  He has no idea that there is any one in the country who knows quite as much as he does.”  It was said in a half complaining tone, but underneath it was the foundation of tender pride, that showed her to be the vain mother of the handsome tyrant.  Still it seemed to be Flossy’s duty to condole with her.

“You miss most of the meetings, do you not?”

“Three-fourths of them.  You see it is inconvenient to have a husband who is reporter for the press, and who must be there to hear.  It is only when he must write up his notes for publication that I can get a chance; and even then, unless it is baby’s sleepy time, it does me no good.  I am especially sorry this morning, for Dr. Cuyler used to be my pastor.  He married me one summer morning just like this, and I haven’t laid eyes on him since.  I should like to hear his voice again, but it can’t be done.”

Now who would have imagined that, with all the powers that were bestirring themselves to come to Flossy’s education, it would have been a rosy, crowing baby, in the unconsciousness of a morning nap, that should have given her her first lesson in unselfishness?  Yet he was the very one.  It flashed over Flossy in an instant from some source.  Who was so likely to have suggested it as the sweet angel who hovered over the sleeping darling?

“Oh, Mrs. Adams, let me stay with baby, and you go to hear Cuyler.  It is a real pity that you should miss him, when he is associated with your life in this way.  I never saw him, and though, of course, I should like to, yet I presume there will be opportunities enough.  I will be as careful of baby as if he were my grandson; and if he wakens I will charm him out of his wits, so that it will never occur to him to cry.”

Of course there was demurring, and profuse expressions of thanks and declinatures all in a breath.  But Flossy was so winning, so eager, so thoroughly in earnest; and the little Mrs. Adams did so love her old pastor, and did feel so anxious to see him again, that in a very short time she was beguiled into going in all haste to her tent to make a “go-to-meeting” toilet; and a blessed thing it was that that sentence does not mean at Chautauqua what it does in Buffalo, or Albany, or a few other places, else Dr. Cuyler might have slipped from them before the necessary articles were all in array.  It involved simply the twitching off of a white apron, the settling of a pretty sun hat—­for the sun actually shone!—­and the seizure of a waterproof, needed, if she found a seat, to protect her from the damp boards—­needed in any case, because in five minutes it might rain—­and she was ready.