“No, Carol, I am not counting on marriage in my scheme of life.  Not yet.  Sometimes I think perhaps I do not believe in it.  It doesn’t work out right.  There is always something wrong somewhere.  Look at Prudence and Jerry,—­devoted to each other as ever, but Jerry’s business takes him out among men and women, into the life of the city.  And Prudence’s business keeps her at home with the children.  He’s out, and she’s in, and the only time they have to love each other is in the evening,—­and then Jerry has clubs and meetings, and Prudence is always sleepy.  Look at Fairy and Gene.  He is always at the drug store, and Fairy has nothing but parties and clubs and silly things like that to think about,—­a big, grand girl like Fairy.  And she is always looking covetously at other women’s babies and visiting orphans’ homes to see if she can find one she wants to adopt, because she hasn’t one of her own.  Always that sorrow behind the twinkle in her eyes!  If she hadn’t married, she wouldn’t want a baby.  Take Larkie and Jim.  Always Larkie was healthy at home, strong, and full of life.  But since little Violet came, Lark is pale and weak, and has no strength at all.  Aunt Grace is staying with her now.  Why, I can’t look at dear old Larkie without half crying.

“Take even you, my precious Carol, perfectly happy, oh, of course, but all your originality, your uniqueness, the very you-ness of you, will be absorbed in a round of missionary meetings, and prayer-meetings, and choir practises, and Sunday-school classes.  The hard routine, my dear, will take the sparkle from you, and give you a sweet, but un-Carol-like precision and method.  Oh, yes, you are happy, but thank you, dear, I think I’ll keep my Self and do my work, and—­be an old maid.

“Mr. Orchard offers himself as an alternative to the roars every now and then, and I expound this philosophy of mine in answer.  He shouts with laughter at it.  He says it is so, so like a baby in business.  He reminds me of the time when gray hairs and crow’s-feet will mar my serenity, and when solitary old age will take the lightness from my step.  But I’ve never noticed that husbands have a way of banishing gray hairs and crow’s-feet and feeble knees, have you?  Babies are nice, of course, but I think I’ll baby myself a little.

“I do get so homesick for the good old parsonage days, and all the bunch, and—­ Still, it is nice to be a baby in business, and think how wonderful it will be when I graduate from my baby-hood, and have brains enough to write books, big books, good books, for all the world to read.

“Lovingly as always,

“Baby Con.”

When Carol read that letter she cried, and rubbed her face against her husband’s shoulder,—­regardless of the dollar powder on his black coat.

“A teeny bit for father,” she explained, “for all his girls are gone.  And a little bit for Fairy, but she has Gene.  And quite a lot for Larkie, but she has Jim and Violet.”  And then, clasping her arm about his shoulders, which, despite her teasing remonstrance, he allowed to droop a little, she cried exultantly:  “But not one bit for me, for I have you, and Connie is a poor, poverty-stricken, wretched little waif, with nothing in the world worth having, only she doesn’t know it yet.”