“I fear you cannot be spared from your other guests, Esther,” says Lockwin.

“I fear you are trying to escape to that dear doctor of yours.  Now, are you not?”

“No.  I have been with him for half an hour already.  Esther, you are a fine-looking woman.  Upon my honor, now—­”

She will not tolerate it, yet she never looked so pleased before.

“Tell me,” she says, “of your little boy.”

“Of my foundling?”

“Yes, I love to hear you speak of him.”

“Well, Esther, the truest thing I have heard of my boy was said by old Richard Tarbelle.  He stopped me the other day.  You know our houses adjoin.  ‘Mr. Lockwin,’ said he, as he came home with his basket—­he goes to his son’s hotel each day for family stores—­’I often say to Mary that the happiest moment in my day is when I give an apple or an orange to your boy, for the look on that child’s face is the nearest we ever get to heaven on this earth.”

“O, beautiful! beautiful!  Mr. Lockwin.”

“Yes, indeed, Esther.  I took that little fellow three years ago.  I had no idea he would grow so pretty.  Folks said it was the oddest of pranks, but if I had bought fifteen more horses than I could use, or dogs enough to craze the neighborhood, or even a parrot, like my good neigbor Tarbelle, everybody would have been satisfied.  Of course, I had to take a house and keep a number of people for whom a bachelor has no great need.  But, Esther, when I go home there is framed in my window the most welcome picture human eye has ever seen—­that little face, Esther!”

The man is enwrapped.  The woman joins in the man’s exaltation.

“He is the most beautiful child I have ever seen anywhere.  It is the talk of everybody.  You are so proud of him when you ride together!”

“Esther, I have seen him in the morning when he came to rouse me—­his face as white as his gown; his golden hair long, and so fleecy that it would stand all about his head; his mouth arched like the Indian’s bow; his great blue eyes bordered with dark brows and lashed with jet-black hairs a half-inch long.  That picture, Esther, I fear no painter can get.  I marvel why I do not make the attempt.”

“He is as bright as he is beautiful,” she says.

“Yes, Esther, I have looked over this world.  Childhood is always beautiful—­always sweet to me—­but my boy is without equal, and nearly everybody admits it.”

“He is not yours, David.”

The man looks inquiringly.

“I have as good a right to love him as you have.  I do love him.”

The man has been eloquent and self-forgetful.  The woman has lost her command.  Tears are coming in her eyes.  Shame is mantling her cheeks.  David Lockwin is startled.

George Harpwood passes in the distance with Esther’s mother on his arm.

“Esther, you know me, with all my faults.  I think we could be happy together—­we three—­you and I and the boy.  Will you marry me?  Will you be a mother to my little boy?  He is lonesome while I am gone!”