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“‘This is her,’ remarked your son with more truth than polish, and I’m, well, antecedently condemned, if that dry-as-dust old lawyer didn’t stoop and kiss her as he wished her joy.”

“Ah, I’m glad he’s as nice as that,” said Mrs. Hawtry, “since he is to be your co-trustee. However,” she added a little wistfully, “I don’t like the idea of anybody dictating to us about the baby. It makes her seem somehow not quite so much our very own. And we could have taken care of her quite well without your mother’s money and advice.”

“Why, my dear,” laughed her husband, “that’s a novel attitude to adopt toward a legacy. The baby is ours as much as she ever was. The advice is as good as any I ever read. And the money will leave us all the more to devote to Jimmie. There’s the making of a good business man in Jimmie.”

* * * * *

It was part of what Mrs. Hawtry for a long time considered the interference of Cecelia Anne’s grandmother that the child should have a monthly allowance, small while she was small and growing with her growth. She was to be allowed to spend it without supervision and to keep an account of it. At the end of each year the trustees were to examine these accounts and to judge from them the trend of their ward’s inclinations. They would be then in a position to curb or foster her leanings as their judgment should dictate.

Now, Cecelia Anne, restored to her friends from a wonderland sort of dream, called going–West–with–papa–on–the–train–and–living– with–Aunt–Elizabeth, was too full of narration and too excited by the envious regard of untraveled playmates to trouble overmuch about that scene in the long drawing-room which she had never clearly understood. The first monthly payment of her allowance failed to connect itself in her mind with the journey. Her predominant emotion on the subject of legacies was one of ardent gratitude to Jimmie. He had given her a quarter out of the change they had received at the toyshop where they had purchased the most beautiful sloop-yacht they had ever seen or dreamed of. A quarter for her very own; Jimmie’s generosity and condescension extended even further than this. He also allowed her, the day being warm, to carry the yacht for a considerable part of their homeward journey, and, when the treasure was exhibited upon the topmost of their own front steps, he allowed her twice to pull the sails up and down. When he went to Central Park to sail the Jennie H, that being as near the feminine form of Jimmie Hawtry as their learning carried them, James, Junior, frequently allowed his sister to accompany him and his envious fellows. Then it was her proud privilege to watch the Jennie H’s wavering course and to rush around the margin of the lake ready to “stand by” to receive her beloved bowsprit wherever she should dock. Then all proudly would she set the rudder straight again and turn the Jennie H back to the landing-stage where Jimmie, surrounded by his cohorts, all calm and cool in his magnificence, awaited this first evidence of “the trend of Cecelia Anne’s inclinations.”

Not quite a year elapsed before Mr. Hawtry’s genial co-trustee visited his little ward. The reading of the will had taken place in November, and on the last week of the following June, Mr. Debrett, chancing to be in New York, decided to cultivate the acquaintance of Cecelia Anne. Mrs. Hawtry and the twins were by this time settled in their country home in Westchester, and Debrett, driving up from the station in the evening with Mr. Hawtry, found it difficult to accept the freckled, barelegged, blue-jumpered form which he saw in the garden, polishing the spokes of a bicycle, as the ward who had lived all these months in his memory: a fragile little figure in funeral black. Never had he seen so altered a child, he assured Mrs. Hawtry with many congratulations. She seemed taller, heavier, more self-assured. But the smile with which she put a greasy little hand into his extended hand was misty and babyish still.