"It surely did; she had it right in her little arms," answered Gilbert, busy with a collar button and not thinking ahead.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Hugh, clapping his hands, "for now I know that if dogs come from heaven, they must go back there too, and I was afraid that my puppy would be dreadful lonely if he couldn't go where there were little boys and girls, for he just loved them."
Satira Pegrim looked at her brother with a horrified expression. Her lips opened to speak, but something that she saw in his face made her close them again. Whatever her feelings as a hard-shell Baptist upon the future state of dogs might be, she did not propose to shorten her visit to her brother by expressing them.
"Have they got names yet?" asked Hugh, his attention now embarrassingly divided between the lady baby and the pup.
"No, sonny; that is, I'm not plumb sure, so I'm going to take time, say until along about the first of the month, to think out a name for the lady baby. As for the pup, suppose you help me out with that. Think up all the names that's short and slick, and then we'll have a choosing bee."
"Dinner is ready," called Mrs. Pegrim from the pantry, where she was slicing bread. "Won't you set up to the table, Hugh, and eat with us?"
"I think I'd better go home now, mother didn't say anything about dinner. Next time I come, I'm going to bring you something, lady baby," Hugh said, gently kissing the dimpled hand she thrust into his face, "and byme by, when you can walk, I'll bring you up to my house to see my mother and lend you part of her, 'cause you've only got a daddy."
"That's just it, at best there'll only be a daddy," murmured Gilbert, drawing his chair to the table and eating as in a dream, in which the wording of the notice for the papers was the chief theme, until he was roused by a spoon pounding his hand vigorously, and found that the child was seated close beside him in Marygold's high-chair, her eyes fastened on his face.
"Look a-here now, Oliver," said Satira Pegrim, resting her arms on her elbows, with knife and fork raised in midair; "I've been thinking, suppose'n the Oldys took a fancy to adopt her. Wouldn't that square up everything for everybody just right? For it's plain to see that Hugh's just achin' for a sister."
Again the forbidding expression settled on Gilbert's face, but Satira did not see it until too late.