“Stormfield, maybe she hasn’t found the child, but I think she has.  Looks so to me.  I’ve seen cases before.  You see, she’s kept that child in her head just the same as it was when she jounced it in her arms a little chubby thing.  But here it didn’t elect to stay a child.  No, it elected to grow up, which it did.  And in these twenty-seven years it has learned all the deep scientific learning there is to learn, and is studying and studying and learning and learning more and more, all the time, and don’t give a damn for anything but learning; just learning, and discussing gigantic problems with people like herself.”

“Well?”

“Stormfield, don’t you see?  Her mother knows cranberries, and how to tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and not another blamed thing!  Her and her daughter can’t be any more company for each other now than mud turtle and bird o’ paradise.  Poor thing, she was looking for a baby to jounce; I think she’s struck a disapp’intment.”

“Sandy, what will they do—­stay unhappy forever in heaven?”

“No, they’ll come together and get adjusted by and by.  But not this year, and not next.  By and by.”

CHAPTER II

I had been having considerable trouble with my wings.  The day after I helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was not lucky.  First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman and brought him down—­brought us both down, in fact.  Next, I had a collision with a Bishop—­and bowled him down, of course.  We had some sharp words, and I felt pretty cheap, to come banging into a grave old person like that, with a million strangers looking on and smiling to themselves.

I saw I hadn’t got the hang of the steering, and so couldn’t rightly tell where I was going to bring up when I started.  I went afoot the rest of the day, and let my wings hang.  Early next morning I went to a private place to have some practice.  I got up on a pretty high rock, and got a good start, and went swooping down, aiming for a bush a little over three hundred yards off; but I couldn’t seem to calculate for the wind, which was about two points abaft my beam.  I could see I was going considerable to looard of the bush, so I worked my starboard wing slow and went ahead strong on the port one, but it wouldn’t answer; I could see I was going to broach to, so I slowed down on both, and lit.  I went back to the rock and took another chance at it.  I aimed two or three points to starboard of the bush—­yes, more than that—­enough so as to make it nearly a head-wind.  I done well enough, but made pretty poor time.  I could see, plain enough, that on a head-wind, wings was a mistake.  I could see that a body could sail pretty close to the wind, but he couldn’t go in the wind’s eye.  I could see that if I wanted to go a-visiting any distance from home, and the wind was ahead, I