The fanciful change came about and was adopted in this wise. In the course of a couple of weeks the box of little garments arrived from Barnesville, accompanied by a warm-hearted note from Jenny Rutherford.

The unpacking of the box--which was not a large one, though it seemed to contain an astonishing number of things, most of them of great length and elaborateness--was to Tom a singularly exciting event, so exciting that he found himself wondering and not at all sure that he understood it.

When he opened the box--Mornin standing at his side, her charge in her arms--he did it with tremulous fingers, and when, having laid one article after another in a snowy drift upon the bed, he drew back to look at them, he found it necessary after a few moments' inspection to turn about and pace the floor, not uneasily, but to work off steam as it were, while Mornin uttered her ejaculations of rapture.

"I never seen nuthin' like 'em afore, Mars' D'Willerby," she said with many excitable giggles. "Dis yer chile's a-gwine to take the flo' shore as yo' bawn! Sich a settin' out as dat is! She'll git ter puttin' on airs afore she's a year ole. We'll hev ter give her a settin' down wunce 'n a while to keep her straight. Mis' Rutherford, she wus boun' to do it up in style, she wus!"

Tom took one hand out of his pocket and ruffled his hair with it, and then put it back again.

"Your young mistresses now," he suggested, "I suppose they are about such things as their mothers made for them."

"Lordy, dey's a heap finer, Mars' D'Willerby--a heap finer! Dey wus rich folks' chillun, but dey never hed sich a settin' out as dis yere--not one on 'em."

"They didn't?" said Tom, with secretly repressed exultation. "Well, if they didn't, I guess she'll do. They are rather nice, I reckon--and I meant they should be. Say, Mornin, suppose you dress her up and let me show her to the boys."

He himself picked out the sumptuous long-skirted garments she was to wear and watched with the deepest interest the rather slow process of her attiring. He was particularly pleased with a wonderfully embroidered white cloak and lace cap, which latter article he abstractedly tied on his great fist and found much too small for it. His triumph, when she was given to his arms, he did not attempt to conceal, but carried her into the store with the manner of a large victor bearing his spoils.

"Now look here, boys," he announced, being greeted with the usual laughter and jocular remarks. "This ain't the style of thing we want.

Hand a man a chair."

His customary support being produced, he seated himself in it, keeping his charge balanced with a dexterity and ease quite wonderful to behold.

"What we want," he proceeded, "is a more respectful tone. Something in the elaborate chivalric style, and we're going to have it. What we want is to come into this establishment feeling that there's no risk of our being scared or upset by any durned fool startling us and setting our delicate machinery wrong. We've come here to stay, and we expect to be more familiar with things as we grow older, and the thing for us is to start out right without any disagreeable impressions. We don't want to say when we're brought in here--'Why, here's the place where that fool gave me such a start last week. I wonder if he's here again?' What we want is to feel that here's a place that's home, and a place that a person's likely to look forward to coming to with the view to ah--I should say to a high old time of an agreeable description."

"She's a-goin' to be a doggoned purty critter," said a lounger who sat on a barrel near by.

"She ain't nuthin' like her mother," said another; "though she wus a purty critter when I seed her."

He had only seen her in her coffin.

"She ain't like her father," put in another.

Tom moved in his chair uneasily.

"She won't be like either of them," he said. "Let that go."

There was a tone in his voice which more than one among them had now and again noticed with some slow bewilderment during the last few weeks--a tone new to them, but which in time they grew used to, though they never understood its meaning.

"Kinder," they used to say, "as ef he wus mad or--ruffed up, though it warn't that exactly, either."

"Black eyes, h'ain't she?" inquired the man on the barrel.

"Yes."

"An har. That's my kind er women, black eyes an' har, and kinder spirity.

They've more devil to 'em 'n' is better able to take care of 'emselves."

"She's got some one to take care of her," answered Tom. "That's my business."

"You've got her mightily fixed up, Tom," remarked Mr. Doty, who had just entered. "You'll hev all the women in the country flocking up. She sorter makes me think o' the Queen o' Sheby. Sheby, she wus great on fixin'."

Every man who entered, seeing her as she lay in state in Tom's lap, was drawn towards her to stand and wonder at her vaguely. There developed a tendency to form small and rather silent groups about her. Infancy was no novelty in this region of numerous progenies, but the fine softness of raiment and delicate sumptuousness of infancy were. More than one man, having looked at her and wandered away, was unable to resist the temptation to wander back again and finally to settle in some seat or box upon a barrel, that he might the better indulge his curiosity and interest.

"Ye must hev spent a heap on her, Tom," was said respectfully again and again.

The fact that "a heap had been spent on her" inspired the audience with a sense of her importance, which amounted to reverence. That she represented an apparently unaccountable expenditure, was considered to reflect credit upon her, however vaguely, and to give her a value not to be lightly regarded. To Mr. Doty the idea of the "Queen of Sheby"

appeared to recur persistently, all his imaginings of the poetic, the dramatic, and luxurious being drawn from Scriptural sources.

"I can't think o' nuthin' else but Sheby when I look at her," he remarked several times. "She 'minds me more o' Sheby then anything else 'n Scripter. Minty'll jest hev to come ter see her."

This boldness of imagery struck a chord in the breast of his hearers which responded at once. It was discovered that more than one of them had been reminded in some indefinite manner of the same distinguished personage.

"When she was consider'ble younger then in Solomon's time," said one gentleman with much solemnity.

Tom himself was caught by the fancy and when his charge was referred to occasionally in a most friendly spirit as "Sheby thar," he made no protest against it.

"It's a thunderation sight better than 'Flishyer,'" he said, "and if it comes easier to you fellows, I've no objection. Sheba ain't bad. There's a kind of swing to it, and you can't get it very far wrong. The other's a good name spoiled, and it's a name I've a fancy for saving for her. I gave it to her--I'll save it for her, and it shall be a thing between us two. Call her Sheba if you like."

So it fell out that Mr. Doty's Oriental imaginings sealed her fate and gradually, by a natural process, Felicia was abandoned for Sheba, even Tom using it upon all ordinary occasions.

Having in this manner begun life, a day rarely passed in which she did not spend an hour or so in the post-office. Each afternoon during the first few months of her existence Tom brought her forth attired in all her broidery, and it was not long before the day came when he began to cherish the fancy that she knew when the time for her visit was near, and enjoyed it when it came.

"She looks as if she did," he said to Mornin. "She wouldn't go to sleep yesterday after I came into the room, and I'll swear I saw her eyes following me as I walked about; and when I carried her in after she was dressed, she turned her head over her shoulder to look round her and smiled when she had done it and found nothing was missing. Oh! she knows well enough when she gets in there."

The fancy was a wonderfully pleasant one to him, and when, as time went on, she developed a bright baby habit of noticing all about her, and expressing her pleasure in divers soft little sounds, he was a happier man than he had ever thought to be. His greatest pleasure was the certain knowledge that she had first noticed himself--that her first greeting had been given to him, that her first conscious caress had been his. She was a loving little creature, showing her affection earlier than most children do. Before she could sit upright, she recognised his in-comings and out-goings, and when he took her in his arms to walk to and fro with her, as was his habit at night, she dropped her tiny head upon his shoulders with a soft yielding to his tenderness which never failed to quicken the beatings of his heart.

"There's something in her face," he used to say to himself, "something that's not in every child's face. It's a look about her eyes and mouth that seems to tell a man that she understands him--whether his spirits are up or down."

But his spirits were not often down in those days. The rooms at the back no longer wore an air of loneliness, and the evenings never hung heavily on his hands. In the course of a few months he sent to Brownsboro for a high chair and tried the experiment of propping his small companion up in it at his side when he ate his supper. It was an experiment which succeeded very well and filled him with triumph. From her place in the kitchen Mornin could hear during every meal the sound of conversation of the most animated description. Tom's big, kind voice rambling cheerily and replied to by the soft and unformed murmuring of the child. He was never tired of her, never willing to give her up.

"What I might have given to others if they'd cared for it," was his thought, "I give to her and she knows it."

It seemed too that she did know it, that from her first gleaming of consciousness she had turned to him as her friend, her protector, and her best beloved. When she heard his footsteps, she turned in Mornin's arms, or in her cradle, to look for him, and when she saw his face her whole little body yearned towards him.

One afternoon when she was about eight months old, he left her at the usual time. Mornin, who was working, had spread a big red shawl upon the floor and seated her upon it, and when Tom went out of the room, she sat still playing in the quiet way peculiar to her, with the gay fringe. She gave him a long earnest look as he crossed the threshold, a look which he remembered afterwards as having been more thoughtful than usual and which must have represented a large amount of serious speculation mingled with desire.

Tom went into the store, and proceeded to the performance of his usual duty of entertaining his customers. He was in a jovial mood, and, having a larger number of visitors than ordinarily, was kept actively employed in settling the political problems of the day and disposing of all public difficulties.

"What's most wanted at the head of things," he proclaimed, "is a man that's capable of exerting himself (Mis' Doty, if you choose that calico, Job can cut it off for you!) a man who ain't afraid of work. (Help yourself, Jim!) Lord! where'd this post-office be if some men had to engineer it--a man who would stand at things and loaf instead of taking right hold. (For Heaven's sake, Bill, don't hurry! Jake'll give you the tea as soon as he's cut off his wife's dress!) That's the kind of men we want in office now--in every kind of office--in every kind of office. If there's one thing I've no use for on God's green earth, it's a man with no energy. (Nicholson, just kick that box over here so I can get my feet on it!)"

He was sitting near the door which connected the back part of the establishment with the front, and it was just at this juncture that there fell upon his ear a familiar sound as of something being dragged over the floor. The next moment he felt his foot touched and then pressed upon by some soft unsteady weight.

He looked down with a start and saw first a small round face upturned, its dark eyes tired but rejoicing and faithful, and then a short white dress much soiled and dusted by being dragged over the bare boards of the two storerooms.

His heart gave a leap and all the laughter died out of his face.

"My God, boys!" he said, as he bent down, "she's followed me! She's followed me!"