He was backward both in walking and in talking.  Twenty months had passed over his curly head before he could fairly stand alone; and then his vocabulary was much more limited than is usual with children of that age.  But Edward construed this into a favorable sign.  “Your precocious children rarely amount to anything,” he said.  “They wear themselves out before they come to the real work of life.  I should really feel disappointed if Little John should grow up a model school-boy.  He would be sure to develop into a pedagogue, or a book-worm, or something of the sort.  Thanks to Providence, he promises better.”

His foster-parents rarely thought of him as an adopted child, so effectually had he possessed himself of their love.  From time to time, however, in some moment of enthusiasm, Edward would declare that the more he thought about it the more he was led to believe that it was better to have found Little John than to have had a child of their own.  “You see, Ellen,” he would say, “we both have an active, nervous temperament.  A child would be very apt to inherit this in an exaggerated degree, and consequently to lead a life unhappy in itself, besides causing us a great deal of sorrow and disappointment.  But what a wonderful reserve of nerve-force Little John has!  Whether he turns out a judge, an artist, or a sailor, it will count for more than his physique, and that is priceless.”  And then Ellen would smile contentedly.  In those days the Lindsays were very happy indeed.

The charms of Marant are well known, and it is not surprising that the Lindsays should have protracted their stay to the utmost, and that autumn should have arrived before they turned their faces westward.  Doubtless Little John would have strongly protested against quitting the sea-side, had he been aware that he was about to do so.  For several days after returning to St. Louis he was certainly almost inconsolable.  He begged constantly, in his peculiar, abbreviated language, for the beach and the ocean, with especial earnestness whenever he was taken for a promenade in his perambulator.  But in time, of course, the grand impression faded from his memory,—­to the secret delight of Ellen, who had never become quite reconciled to his adoration of the sea.

As the child acquired words and accomplishments, he lost nothing of his sweetness and strangely mature dignity.  When the tan disappeared from his cheeks, he looked a little less robust; but this was to have been expected.  Such confidence had the Lindsays in the invulnerability of his constitution that they were not alarmed when he experienced his inevitable first indisposition of a serious character.  Mrs. Doly and Ellen agreed that it was a natural consequence of the change in his diet and mode of life since they had come back to the city, and Dr. Kreiss, who was at once summoned, substantiated the theory.  But the next day Little John was no better, and at night so decidedly worse that Edward sent for the doctor again.  The man of medicine looked grave this time.  He stayed with the little sufferer for several hours.  Before midnight he came once more; and when he went away Little John was dead.