When Mrs. Francis decided to play the Lady Bountiful to
the Watson family, she not only ministered to their
physical necessity but she conscientiously set about to
do them good, if they would be done good to. Mrs. Francis's
heart was kind, when you could get to it; but it was so
deeply crusted over with theories and reflections and
abstract truths that not very many people knew that she
had one.

When little Danny's arms were thrown around her neck,
and he called her his dear sweet, pink lady, her
pseudo-intellectuality broke down before a power which
had lain dormant. She had always talked a great deal of
the joys of motherhood, and the rapturous delights of
mother-love. Not many of the mothers knew as much of the
proper care of an infant during the period of dentition
as she. She had read papers at mothers' meetings, and
was as full of health talks as a school physiology.

But it was the touch of Danny's soft cheek and clinging
arms that brought to her the rapture that is so sweet it
hurts, and she realised that she had missed the sweetest
thing in life. A tiny flame of real love began to glimmer
in her heart and feebly shed its beams among the debris
of cold theories and second-hand sensations that had
filled it hitherto.

She worried Danny with her attentions, although he tried
hard to put up with them. She was the lady of his dreams,