“But I’ll tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, what I did see that nobody on the wide earth c’d help wishin’ was on top o’ their grave the minute they laid eyes on it.  It’s a lion—­a weepin’ lion—­kind o’ tryin’ to wipe his eyes with one paw.  I tell you I never saw nothin’ one quarter so handsome over no one yet, ‘n’ if I wasn’t thinkin’ o’ adoptin’ a child I’d never rest until I’d set that lion on top of father.  But o’ course, as it is, I can’t even think how it might look there; the livin’ has rights over the dead, ‘n’ my child can’t go without the necessaries of life while my father gets a weepin’ lion ’t when you come right square down to it he ain’t got no more use for ‘n’ a cat has for two tails.  No, I’m a rich woman, but all incomes has their outside fence.  ’F a man ’s got a million a year, he can’t spend two million, ‘n’ I can’t start in child raisin’ ‘n’ tombstone father all in the same year.  Father ’ll have to wait, ‘n’ he got so used to it while he was alive ’t he ought not to mind it much now he’s dead.  But I give the man my address, ‘n’ he give me one o’ his cards, ‘n’ when I go to the Orphan Asylum I may go back ‘n’ see him, an’ maybe if I tell him about the baby he’ll reduce the lion some.  The lion is awful high—­strikes me.  He’s three hunderd dollars, but the man says that ’s because his tail ‘s out o’ the same block.  I asked him if he couldn’t take the tail off, but he said ’t that would hurt his reputation.  He said ’f I’d go up the ladder to his second floor ‘n’ look down on the lion I’d never talk about sawin’ off his tail, ‘n’ he said ’t anyhow cuttin’ it off would only make it cost more because it was cut on in the first place.  I saw the sense o’ that, ‘n’ I remembered, too, ’t even ’f folks in the cemetery never can see the tail, father ’ll have to look at it from higher up ’n the ladder to the monument man’s shed, ‘n’ I don’t want him to think ’t I economized on the tail of his tombstone.  I tell you what, Mrs. Lathrop, I cert’nly do want that lion, but I can’t have it, so I’ve decided not to think of it again.  The man c’d see I wanted it, ‘n’ I c’d see ’t he really wanted me to have it.  He felt so kind o’ sorry for me ’t he said he’d do me a weepin’ fox for one hunderd ‘n’ fifty, if I wanted it, but I didn’t want no fox.  Father didn’t have nothin’ like a fox—­his nose was broad ‘n’ kind o’ flat.  He hadn’t nothin’ like a lion, neither, but I’d like to have the only lion in the cemetery ours.”

Mrs. Lathrop nodded her head sympathetically.

Miss Clegg sighed and looked pensive for a moment, but it was soon over.

“‘N’ I’ve decided about my child too,” she continued briskly,—­“I’ve decided to have a boy.  I decided goin’ in on the train to-day.  I’d been sorter thinkin’ that I’d leave it to chance, but ordinary folks can’t do no more ‘n’ that, ‘n’ where ‘s the good o’ me bein’ so open ‘n’ above-board ’f I dunno whether it’ll be a boy or girl, after all?  I might ’s well ’s married the minister,