The Candy Man remembered the tree.

“He said the doctor was going to have it painted, but he kind of liked it red, and so did her ladyship.”

“And who might her ladyship be?” the Candy Man inquired.

“That’s what I asked him, and he said, ‘You come over and see,’ and then he said—­now listen to this, for it’s just like a story.”  Virginia lifted an admonishing finger.  “He said, whenever I saw smoke coming out of that Little Red Chimney, I might know her ladyship had come to town.  You’d better believe I’m going to watch.  And what do you think!  I can see it from our dining-room window!” she concluded.

“Most interesting,” said the Candy Man politely, without the least idea how interesting it really was.

Virginia’s gaze suddenly fastened on a small book lying on the seat of the Candy Wagon, and she had seized it before its owner could protest.  “What a funny name,” she said. “‘E p i c t e t u s.’  What does that spell?  And what made you cut a hole in this page?  It looks like a window.”

The page was a fly leaf, from which a name, possibly that of a former owner, had been removed.  Below it the Candy Man’s own name was now written.

“It was so when I got it,” he answered, holding out his hand for it.  He had no mind to have his book in any other keeping, for somewhere within its leaves lay a crimson flower.

Before she returned it Virginia examined the back.  “Vol.  I, what does that mean?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer she tossed it back to him, and ran to join the other pigeons.

From this time Virginia began to be almost as constant a visitor as the Reporter.  She had a way of bursting into conversation without any preface whatever, speaking entirely from the fullness of her heart at the moment.

“I’d give anything in the world to be pretty,” she remarked one day, resting her school bag on the carriage block and sighing deeply.

“But now honestly,” said the Candy Man, regarding her gravely, “it seems to me you are a very nice-looking little girl, and who knows but you may turn out a great beauty some day?  That is the way it happens in story books.”

Virginia returned his gaze steadily.  “Do you really think there is any chance?  You are not laughing?”

He assured her he was intensely serious.

“Well, you are the first person who ever told me that.  Uncle Harry said, ‘Is it possible, Cornelia, that this is your child?’ Cornelia is my mother, and she is a beauty.  My brother is awfully good looking, too.  Everybody thinks he ought to have been the girl.  I’ll tell you who I want to look like when I grow up.  Don’t you know that young lady who fell in the mud?”

Oh, yes, the Candy Man knew, and applauded Virginia’s ambition.  He would have been pleased to enlarge on the subject, even to the extent of neglecting business, but just as she began to be interesting Virginia remembered an errand to the drug store, and ran away.