The girl took the little boy in her arms. Why did they do it just that
day, when her head ached, and she had so many worries? Those beautiful
curls! How she had loved them!

"Now Doro, you are going to cry, 'cause your eyes look like polly-wogs.
And you must be glad that I'm a man, like Joe, now," and the boy sprang
from her arms, and stood up like a "major" before her.

Then he was a "man," and her baby no longer. It was not the curls so
much, but taking her baby from her, that hurt so.

The loving mother-spirit, that had made Dorothy Dale the girl she was,
seemed to grow stronger now with every tear that clouded her eyes. Yes,
he bad been her baby, and she had loved him with a wonderful love--sent
into her heart, she always thought, by the mother in heaven who watched
over them both.

"You have been a very good boy," she managed to say, "and Joe is a very
good boy, so, if you can be like him, perhaps I will not be so lonely
without the other Roger."

It was an hour later that Dorothy met Tavia in the lane and hurried to
school with her. Of course she could not tell her friend what it was
that made her so quiet, and it really was hard to keep a secret like
that of the mysterious man from Tavia.

Perhaps she could tell her in the afternoon, by that time Mr. Burlock
would likely have all his affairs attended to and then he said he would
tell the town who the man was for whom the people had been looking.