She stood in the porch to watch the wheels of his departing chariot flash through the sun and dust.  She stared long at the vacant point of disappearance, like one entranced.  When she came to herself, she ran into the house and fell upon little Harry.

“My baby,” she crooned passionately, “My baby!”

Carey Junior responded with his ready fist, pushing her from him.  He was feeding the puppy with a strawberry, and she put her head in the way.

“Fie!  You mustn’t do that,” said Mrs Kelsey, mindful of her responsibilities.  “That’s rude.”

“Oh, let him,” pleaded the girl, infatuated with that look of his father in his face; and she dropped on her knees before him and kissed a dangling foot, with which he kicked her mouth.  “Let him do what he likes, so long as he’s happy.”

“Not at all,” her old nurse reproved her.  “I promised Mr Carey that he should not be spoiled.”

He was not spoiled.  The admirable foster-mother, brooking no interference with her system, improved him into a well-behaved child, as well as the healthiest and most beautiful in all that countryside.  It was a standing grievance at Redford that she would not allow him to be always on show there, subject to Mary’s indulgence, and Deb’s caprices, and the temptations of the housekeeper’s store-room.  Only Mr Kelsey, who was his idol, was permitted to withdraw him from Mrs Kelsey’s eye.  The man used to take the child, with a toy whip in his little hand, on the saddle before him, and let him think he was guiding the steady horse and doing all the business of the station as well.  The overseer confessed, in bad weather, when he had to ride alone, that he was lost without his little mate.  “Hardly weaned,” he used to brag, “and knows every beast on the place as well as I do myself.”  This was gross exaggeration, yet was the infant Harry a conspicuously forward child, with the “makings of a man” in him visible to all.  His hearty whoas and gee-ups carried as far as the overseer’s gruff voice; and the picture of the jolly boy, with his rosy, joyous face, and his fair curls blowing in the wind, was one to kindle the admiration of all who saw it.  The phrase continually on the lips of his adopted family and connections was:  ’Won’t his father be surprised when he sees him!’ They enjoyed in anticipation the grateful praises that would be heaped upon them then.

But Guthrie Carey never saw his son again.

The baby went a-visiting with his foster-parents to the local township, and it was supposed caught the infection of typhoid there from some unknown source.  Having caught it, the robust little body, unused to any ailment, was wrecked at once, where a frail child might easily have weathered the storm.  No little prince of blood royal could have been better nursed and more strenuously fought for; but three days after he had visibly sickened he was dead.  And then the wail went up, “Oh! what will his father say?”