“I think so,” said the good man.  He was gratified to be called to the relief of a person of so much consequence.  Thereupon began a patient treatment of Davy’s tonsils, his nose, and his eyes.  As if Dr. Floddin knew all things, he foretold the day when the boy would reappear in his own countenance.

“Bless your little soul,” the housekeeper would say, “I can’t for the life of me laugh at you.  But you do look so strange!”

“I thought,” Lockwin would say, “I loved you for your beauty, Davy, but I guess it was for yourself.”

“I guess you will love me better when I can play ball with the swear boys, won’t you, papa?”

“Yes, you must get strong.  We will cut off your curls then.”

“And may I sit in your library and write articles if I will be very still and not get mud on me?  They throwed mud on me once, papa.”

Poor little swollen-eyed Davy!  Yet richer than almost any other living thing in Chicago.  None knew him but to love him.  “I didn’t think it would hit him,” said even the barbarian who shied the clod at Davy.

When Esther Lockwin took charge of that home she found Davy all issued from the chrysalis of sores and swellings.  If he had once been beautiful, he was now more lovely.  The union of intelligence, affection, and seemliness was startling to Esther’s mind.

It was a dream.  It knit her close to her husband.  The child talked of his papa all day.  Because his new mother listened so intently, he found less time to write his articles, and no time at all out-doors.

“Don’t let him study if you can help it,” said Dr. Floddin.

The child stood at his favorite place in the window, waiting for old Richard Tarbelle to come home.

“‘Bon-Ton Grocery,’ mamma; what is ‘Bon-Ton?’”

“That is the name of the grocery.”

“Yes, I see that.  It’s on the wagon, of course, but does Mr. Bon-Ton keep your grocery?”

How, therefore, shall the book of this world be shut from Davy?  But, is it not a bad thing to see the child burst out crying in the midst of an article?

“Don’t write any more to-day, baby,” the housekeeper would say.

“Come down and get the elephant I baked for yez, pet,” the cook would beg.

And then Richard Tarbelle would come around the corner with his basket, his eye fastened on that window where the smiling child was pictured.

“Here, Davy.  There was a banquet at the hotel last night.  See that bunch of grapes, now!”

“You are very kind, Mr. Tarbelle.”

“Mrs. Lockwin, I have been a hard man all my life.  When I had my argument with the bishop on baptism—­”

“Yes, Mr. Tarbelle, you are very kind.”

“Mrs. Lockwin, as I said, I have been a hard man all my life, but your little boy has enslaved me.  Sixty-three years!  I don’t believe I looked twice at my own three boys.  But they are great men.  Big times at the ho-tel, Mrs. Lockwin.  Four hundred people on cots.  Here, Davy, you can carry an orange, too.  Well, Mary will be waiting for me.  Your servant, madam.  Good day.  I hear your husband is up for Congress.  Tell him he has my vote.  Good day, madam.  Yes, Mary, yes, yes.  Good-bye, Davy.  Good-bye, madam.”