Clara searched him, but found nothing.
"There's nothing on you, little dear!" she said. "Come home, now. It is dinner-time, and you must help me to arrange the flowers. There is no bug, child; it is all your imagination."
"Does my imagination wiggle?" he cried indignantly. "There!"
The last exclamation referred to a creeping at his throat; and out hopped an active little frog, which had been circumnavigating the child ever since he pulled the last blue lily.
They went homeward with their baskets of flowers, and encountered on the way Boadicea Patten with her baby in her arms. She had come to see her son and daughter, and was trying to keep out of sight of the front windows, where she saw a stranger.
Clara Yorke immediately seized upon the infant. No baby ever escaped her caresses; and this one the young ladies had taken under their especial charge. They supplied its wardrobe, and went to see it, or had it come to them every week. It was a pretty child, bright, white, and well-mannered, with a lordly air of taking homage as if it were due.
When Clara entered the parlor, she found only the gentlemen and Edith there; but that did not prevent her insisting on her little one being received with enthusiasm. She called attention to the wonderful dimpled shoulders and elbows, pulled its eyelids down pitilessly to display the long lashes, uncurled its yellow locks and let them creep back into rings again, and crowned it with violets, quoting Browning:
"Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
As those were all the little locks could bear."
Then she consigned the child to her brother. "I have domestic cares to attend to," she said, "and you must amuse my beauty while I am gone. 'What must you do?' Talk to it, of course. 'What shall you say?' Why, Owen, do not be stupid! Say whatever you can think of that is suited to the darling's capacity. Come, Eugene, we have important affairs on hand."
Carl looked at his charge with immense good-will and not a little perplexity, and it stared back solemnly at him, waiting to be entertained. Something must be said.