“You bet he is.  See that tin can in the sink?  Well, I wanted a soap-shaker but couldn’t afford to get one.  Arthur took that can and punched the bottom full of holes.  I keep it filled up with all the odds and ends of soap.  When I wash the dishes, I just let the boiling water from the kettle flow through it.  It makes water grand and soapy.  Arthur made me that iron dish-rag and that dish-mop.”

A sleepy cry came from the corner.  Dicky swung across the room.  Balancing himself against the cradle there, he lifted the baby to the floor.  “She can’t walk yet but you watch her go,” he said proudly.

Go!  The baby crept across the room so fast that Maida had to run to keep up with her.  “Oh, the love!” she said, taking Delia into her arms.  “Think of having a whole baby to yourself.”

“Can’t leave a thing round where she is,” Dicky said proudly, as if this were the best thing he could say about her.  “Have to put my work away the moment she wakes up.  Isn’t she a buster, though?”

“I should say she was!” And indeed, the baby was as fat as a little partridge.  Maida wondered how Dicky could lift her.  Also Delia was as healthy-looking as Dicky was sickly.  Her cheeks showed a pink that was almost purple and her head looked like a mop, so thickly was it overgrown with tangled, red-gold curls.

“Is she named after your mother?” Maida asked.

“No—­after my grandmother in Ireland.  But of course we don’t call her anything but ‘baby’ yet.  My, but she’s a case!  If I didn’t watch her all the time, every pan in this room would be on the floor in a jiffy.  And she tears everything she puts her hands on.”

“Granny must see her sometime—­Granny’s name is Delia.”

“Hi, stop that!” Dicky called.  For Delia had discovered the little bundle that Maida had placed on a chair, and was busy trying to tear it open.

“Let her open it,” Maida said, “I brought it for her.”

They watched.

It took a long time, but Delia sat down, giving her whole attention to it.  Finally her busy fingers pulled off so much paper that a pair of tiny rubber dolls dropped into her lap.

“Say ‘Thank you, Maida,’” Dicky prompted.

Delia said something and Dicky assured her that the baby had obeyed him.  It sounded like, “Sank-oo-Maysa.”

While Delia occupied herself with the dolls, Maida listened to Dicky’s reading lesson.  He was getting on beautifully now.  At least he could puzzle out by himself some of the stories that Maida lent him.  When they had finished that day’s fairy-tale, Dicky said: 

“Did you ever see a peacock, Maida?”

“Oh, yes—­a great many.”

“Where?”

“I saw ever so many in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and then my father has some in his camp in the Adirondacks.”

“Has he many?”

“A dozen.”

“I’m just wild to see one.  Are they as beautiful as that picture in the fairy-tale?”