When the quarrel grew old and ugly and personal to the men themselves, Anna thought of another means of reconciliation. The child was the last remaining link between the Governor and the Factor--it should bring them together again. "God has always a use for these little angels," she said.
Aunt Margret joined in the conspiracy and the two old things concocted many schemes--all simple and transparent but womanly and good--to get the men into the same room. They never succeeded, but a thousand beams of sunshine shone out of the baby's cradle, and little by little the ice that had frozen about the men's souls was seen to melt.
When the child was "shortened" it was taken over to Government House and wheeled in its perambulator into the Governor's bureau.
"Isn't she a beauty, Stephen?" said Anna; and Aunt Margret said,
"The precious pet couldn't possibly be more like her father if she were not so wonderfully like her mother, too."
The Governor looked down at the little face without saying a word, and when the child blinked up at him with the eyes of Thora and the smile of Oscar he went up-stairs to his bedroom, and Anna heard him lock the door.
When the child cut her first tooth, and everybody according to custom ought to have given her a "tooth-fee," the Factor, coming home at night, found no presents on the nursery table, but the little one was propped up under the blue lace of her hooded cradle and making the air hideous with the divine discord of a baby's silver-mounted rattle.
"That's Stephen's present and it must have cost him a fortune," said Aunt Margret, whereupon the Factor, weary as he was, walked out into the road where he could hear nothing but the cold lapping of the lake.
Yet love of the little one was not bringing the two men together--it was thrusting them still farther apart. "That man is scheming to get hold of the child," thought the Factor. "He and his have robbed me of my daughters and now they're trying to rob me of my granddaughter also."
"She's my son's child," thought the Governor, "and my son's child is my child--why did I allow that man to have her?"