"Where's the baby?" he demanded. "I supposed I should find you giving it its supper."
"There isn't any 'it' in this house," was my retort; "and as for baby's supper, you are just as ignorant as a man always is. Any woman would know that babies are put to bed long before this."
He grinned down upon me from his height.
"How should I know what time it went to bed?" he asked, with a laugh in his voice. "I never raised a baby. I've come to talk about it, though."
"Look here, Deacon Daniel," I cried out, with affected indignation, "I will not have my baby called 'it,' as if she were a stick or a stock!"
He laughed outright at this; then at my invitation sat down beside me. We were silent for a time, looking at the color fading in the west, and the single star swimming out of the purple as the sky changed into gray. The frogs were working at their music with all the persistence of a child strumming five-finger exercises, but their noise only made the evening more peaceful.
"How restful it is," I said to him at last; "it almost makes one feel there can never be any fretting again about anything."
Deacon Daniel did not answer for a moment, then he said with the solemnity of one who seldom puts sentiment into words,—
"It is like the Twenty-third Psalm."