She sat on her porch after the visitors had gone, thinking strange Miss Theodosia thoughts. A man, coming up her front path and lifting a soft felt hat, interrupted the strangest thought of all.

"I beg your pardon. Is this where somebody needs help? I was told—"

Miss Theodosia laughed outright.

"I do need help. Were you ever a steam whistle? You put two fingers in your mouth, one in each corner—I was trying to get up my courage to do it!"

The felt hat rolled down the steps, the stranger needing both his hands.

"Like this?"

"Ye-s. I never saw a steam whistle, you know. That was what I was wishing."

"Heard one? Because I can give a demonstration."

"Don't!" Miss Theodosia shut her ears.

"I heard one—demonstration. I thought some one was dying, at least."

"Oh, that was the 'help wanted!' I see. My services are not required, then; it was a false alarm."

Miss Theodosia was on her feet, remembering her manners. "It was a true enough alarm; won't you sit down? I think my nerves need a doctor."

"Did I call myself a doctor? I am a reformed doctor, madam. It is some years since I got out. But I thought, in a very urgent case—fits, you know, or something like that—Thank you, I won't sit down. My work calls me."

Miss Theodosia inclined her head politely, but curiosity seized her. How curious she was getting about many things!

"I wish I knew—" she began.

"Yes, madam?"

"What work 'calls' reformed doctors. After they are—out."

The stranger's big, unharnessed laugh was almost startling to Miss Theodosia. Why? She had never heard just such a big, unharnessed laugh before. She had heard a big harnessed laugh—when? Before she could answer her own thought, or the stranger could answer her spoken query, a hurry of small feet sounded. Only Evangeline's feet could break speed limits like that.

"Oh, Miss Theodosia—oh, I don't want to int'rupt, but just soon's he's gone—"

"He's gone," sighed Miss Theodosia, as the child came up. "You mustn't interrupt again, that way, unless it's a very urgent case—fits or something." In spite of proper vexation, she smiled. "Who was that man, Evangeline, that just went away?"

"Oh, I don't know—I wasn't acquainted with his back; that's every speck o' him I saw. Oh! oh! oh!"

"Evangeline Flagg, what is the matter now?"

"'D you ever do up a man, Miss Theodosia? Stiff—awful stiff? Stefana says it's bad enough to do women up. She's havin' a dreadful time! We can't get the stiffness out; I been helpin'. It stands up alone!" Suddenly, without warning, Evangeline went off into a series of shrill shrieks.

"Stop me! Stop me! Don't l-let Stefana hear me! Don't l-let me laugh!"

This was an urgent case—fits or something, surely! Miss Theodosia's eyes sought the horizon for a reformed doctor. In lack of one, she shook Evangeline.

"Stop at once! Make yourself stop; count ten!"

"One! Two-o! Th-ree!" shrieked Evangeline, through to ten. Ten separate shrieks. Then, abruptly, she ceased.

"Mercy gracious, I've stopped! I hope Stefana wasn't listenin'. But she wasn't; she was cryin'. I left her cryin'. If you could come over—. Honest, we can't do a thing! We thought you'd probably did up men."

Miss Theodosia never had. Not so—awful a thing as that!

"It stands up alone, with both arms out! I don't dass to go back. I shall laugh if I do, an' if I laugh, Stefana'll cry. She don't think it's f-funny." The shrieks showed signs of returning, and Miss Theodosia again had recourse to stern measures.

"Count ten!" she demanded, as she shook.

They went back together to the mysterious something that stood alone
with both arms out. It was in that pose as they approached it. Miss
Theodosia thought it was f—funny; an awful desire to shriek like
Evangeline took possession of her. She counted ten in inward haste.

"I can't do anything with it!" wailed poor Stefana. "And Elly Precious gets into it, and makes it walk! He's in it now."

"It's walkin'!" shrieked Evangeline, as the portentously stiff shirt staggered a little to one side. Stefana, filled with enthusiasm and generosity of soul, had starched not the bosom alone but the entire shirt. She had done it thoroughly. The result was alarming. It was a terrible shirt!

"Tell me what to do—somebody tell me!" entreated the little laundress.
"I've unstarched it, and unstarched it, and seems as if it got stiffer."

"Boiling water," breathed Miss Theodosia, too spent with her struggles not to laugh, to admit of further speech.

"Wait! Don't anybody dass to pour boilin' water on till I get Elly Precious out! Come to Evangeline this minute, darlin' dear—no, they shan't boil him!"

Elly Precious emerged, crowing. The deaf-but-not-dumb little Flagg appeared, to swell the number around the Terrible Shirt. Stefana dried her tears. Miss Theodosia had the sense of being looked up to—relied upon. She rose to the occasion buoyantly. As unused as Stefana to men's bosoms, she yet stepped into the breach. Unused to issuing orders, she issued them.

"Evangeline, you and Carruthers see to the baby. Stefana, come with me.
Bring—it."

They went back to the big house, she with that new and intoxicating sense of importance, and Stefana with the Terrible Shirt.

"Whose is it—that?" she asked, indicating the creaking white garment.
"What were you doing with it?"

"Starching it," mumbled poor Stefana. "It took most a package. He said he liked his stiff. 'Put in plenty o' starch,' he said to Mother, and she always did. So I did. I thought if he said—"

"If who said?" It took a long time to establish the identity of the
Terrible Shirt.

"If he did, the man it belongs to."

"What man—who?"

"The man that writes things."

"What things?"

"We don't know exactly. Evangeline thinks tracts. She says his room was all full o' half sheets o' paper—lying all over everywhere. She saw 'Good Lord' on one. Perhaps it's sermons. Mother always sent Evangeline home with his wash; I never went. He is a very nice man—oh, that's why I feel so bad about his shirt! I wouldn't care if he was an—an infidel!"

"Bless your heart!"

Miss Theodosia turned suddenly and embraced Stefana and the shirt.
"Don't worry any more," she said; "you and I will work wonders with that
Tract Man's shirt! Stefana, put the kettle on and we'll go to it!
There's nothing two determined people can't do, once they've put their
minds on it."

Together they labored, and the impossible happened. Theodosia Baxter did up a man! She—and Stefana—succeeded in getting the starch out of the surrounding area and into the bosom of the Terrible Shirt. They got much starch in. Inspiration appeared to come to Miss Theodosia. Even the really awful task of ironing that bosom till it glittered and shone in unwrinkled board-like expanse was at length accomplished. Miss Theodosia was justly proud of herself—and of Stefana; she insisted upon including Stefana in her triumphs.

"Eureka!" she exulted. "Call Evangeline, Stefana, and Elly Precious, and Carruthers! Call in a Chinaman, if you like, and tell him to look at that! Ask him to beat it!"

"There isn't any in this town," responded literal Stefana. "That's why
Mother did bosoms. She'd a good deal rather not've."

"But I love to do bosoms!" sang Miss Theodosia. "I never felt so worth while in my life before—an artist in starch, Stefana!"

"Well, you've done beautifully—I never did see!" the grateful Stefana cried. "But I'm afraid it's kind of gone to your head. I think you better lie down."

"Send for the Reformed Doctor! Stefana, what are you doing with my beautiful bosom?"

"I won't muss it. I'm just going to take it home and sew the buttons on. There's two off. Mother always sewed 'em on; he pays two cents extra for repairs."

Miss Theodosia's fair face flushed. "You don't stir a step with it! I have buttons and a spool of thread—what I do, I finish doing! Give it to me."

For the first time, Miss Theodosia handled a man's garment intimately. It lay stiffly across her lap. She sewed on the two buttons; she mended a tiny "hog-tear." Life had taken on new interests—bosoms and buttons. She thrilled—when had she ever thrilled before? Ironing her own dresses had been a poor, tame business. She would be sorry to part with this shirt!

And then Evangeline came.

"Mercy gracious, doesn't it look elegant! I came over because he's come for his shirt. He says he's goin' to begin a new story, an' he always has to have a clean shirt on. An' his hair cut—he's got it cut. I guess that bosom'll match his hair all right! It's perfectly lovely!"

"What did you do with Elly Precious, Evangeline Flagg!" demanded
Stefana.

"That's it—that's why I got to hurry back. He's keepin' Elly Precious for me, an' he don't know what to do with babies. He says all his are paper ones—paper babies! He gave Elly Precious his knife, an' opened the blades to amuse him! He said he guessed Elly Precious wouldn't hurt 'em!" Evangeline's face registered great scorn. "If you'll give it to me, I'll carry it to him," she concluded, holding out her hand for the shirt. But Miss Theodosia sewed calmly on. She had found a second tear larger than the first. It would be better to strengthen it with a little piece underneath. She would find a white scrap in her bag of pieces.

"It is not ready yet. He can wait. But you must not wait, Evangeline.
Elly Precious may be playing with his pistol, if he carries one."

"He don't. He ain't a pistol-man, but, mercy gracious, how you scare me!
You comin' too, Stefana?"

"Yes, Stefana can go now. She is all through," which was Miss
Theodosia's kind inclusion of Stefana. That, again, was curiously new to
Miss Theodosia. Psychological changes were taking place—or were they
just plain tugs on Miss Theodosia's heartstrings?

She sat and sewed.

"Patching—I'm patching!" she laughed to herself. "And here I've been hiring my own mending done! Theodosia Baxter, see what you are doing; you are patching a shirt for a man! No, I'm not, either! I'm doing it for Stefana—what are you talking about?"

Some one came up her steps and knocked on her open door. But she was too engrossed to hear. The patch underneath had slipped a little askew. She ripped out some of the stitches and began again. She caught herself humming as she worked.

"Please may I have my shirt?" a voice asked meekly. "That story is promised for next month. It's the twenty-eighth, now."

Evangeline's Tract Man stood in the doorway, soft felt hat in hand, twinkles in his eyes. Evangeline's Tract Man was the Reformed Doctor! If Miss Theodosia had been eighteen instead of thirty-six she would not have blushed more beautifully, but she continued to patch. She was caught in the act; no help for it now. But she would finish—that—patch.

"So it's you! So that's the work Reformed Doctors do!"

"Madam, yes. When stories appeal to them more than pills and tonics, they reform and write stories. They have to!" he cried, suddenly in earnest, "When one is life, and the other death—"

"Oh, if it was death to them—your patients," she murmured. Then, ashamed of her own flippancy: "Of course, I didn't mean anything as silly as that! I meant—I meant, please sit down while I finish this patch. There, in that easy-chair. There are magazines on the table."

There was one magazine with his own name in the list of contents. He opened it at that page and gazed down upon it quite soberly.

"My name is John Bradford," he said, as if reading. Miss Theodosia started a little, but it was not as he thought, in his innocent vanity. Miss Theodosia got no farther than the first part of the name—so he was a John! She glanced quickly at the doorway, measuring him in her mind as he had stood against the lintel. He had reached a long way up—a long man. The Shadow Man had been a long shadow. Something told her—

[Illustration: "If you are thinking of putting me anywhere, put me into a story like that."]

"Did you ever carry a child in your arms and lay her on a bed? In the middle of the night? Did you do it last night? Are you the same man?"

"I am the same man I was last night," he answered gravely. "I was John
Bradford then, too. Didn't I carry her all right? What was the matter?"
Suddenly he leaned forward in the chair. "Did you kiss her thumbs?" he
demanded.

"I kissed her eyes."

They were silent for a little, while Miss Theodosia set small, nervous stitches in John Bradford's shirt, and John Bradford twiddled the edges of the magazine. He stole glances, now and then, at this strange woman with whom he seemed to have come so oddly into contact. He could make a story of her dark hair, straight shoulders, beautiful hands. He could not get a good view of her full face. Bending over a bed, kissing a little sleeper's eyes—he could work her in that way. If he knew her a little better—

"I knew they did it!"

"Did what—who?"

"Women—kissed that way. You have proved it now."

"I'm not women. I'm just one woman, and I never did it in my life before."

"Well, you liked doing it, didn't you? I could put you in, liking it."

The shirt slid to the floor, and Miss Theodosia gave her visitor a full view of her face.

"Are you making 'copy' of me? Because if you are thinking of putting me anywhere, put me into a story like that. I'd like it. I mean, with little children in a bed—and one in a clothes basket! Say I tucked them in—Yes, I liked kissing Stefana's eyes. I should love to have another chance. It's nothing to be ashamed of, is it, to like little children?"

"I like 'em. I always have."

"Well, I always haven't. Only very lately—it's queer. When I came home here and found all those children next door—mercy gracious!"

They both laughed. Laughing together is a great acquaintancer. Miss
Thedosia suddenly thought of something and laughed a little more.

"My name is Theodosia Baxter," she said. They rose and shook hands gravely. They were decently introduced. The beautiful shiny bosom of the shirt lay between them like a white mirror and Miss Theodosia caught the man's glance on it.

"Is it anything to be ashamed of—doing up a shirt?" she demanded.

"Not doing it up like that! That's a work of art!"

"A work of heart—I did it for Stefana. I've got quite fond of it now, and shall hate to part with it. It's a friend."

"A bosom friend," he parried. Again they laughed and grew more acquainted. Miss Theodosia made tea in her dainty SÈvres cups. The faintest flecks of pink made her face youthful. Miss Theodosia was a good-looking woman always, but, animated, her face was really lovely. John Bradford was better used to paper women, like paper babies, but his taste recognized flesh-and-blood attractiveness. He had always been a lonely man—until now.

"I'm having a beautiful time," he sighed. "Is it anything to be ashamed of, to have a beautiful time?"

"Or two cups of tea? Please! This is my company tea—warranted good to write stories on!"

"Oh—stories. Are there such things? Did I ever write one? Have I got to write another?"

"It's the twenty-eighth," Miss Theodosia reminded demurely. "But you will need another cup of tea. How long does it take?"

"To drink another cup?"

"To write another story. Tell me about it. Perhaps I could do it. You
take a blotter and a pen and plenty of half-sheets of paper—'tracts,'
Evangeline calls them! Then you write 'Good Lord!' That is what
Evangeline says you wrote on a tract! She said maybe it was a sermon."

"Oh—Evangeline! And speaking of angels—"

"Mercy gracious! You're here—both o' you! An' somebody's gone an' spilled a drop of somethin' on that beautiful bosom!"

"A tear-drop, Evangeline, because she wouldn't give it to me."

"Tea drop!" sniffed Evangeline. "Guess I know! After all Stefana's work! Miss Theodosia, can Elly Precious eat your grass? He's out there now. He don't really eat it; he just kind of pretends. Mother says Elly Precious ought to be put out to pasture. We haven't got any grass to speak of, over to our house."

"Don't speak of it! Of course he can eat mine, if you think it is edible. Ask the Reformed Doctor."

"Him a doctor? Mercy gracious—honest? Then he knows if Elly Precious'd ought to eat grass—not really eat, you know."

"Just graze a little—let him graze." The Reformed Doctor rose to his feet and held out his hand to Miss Theodosia. "I'll go out and see how he does it. It's lucky Evangeline came in, or I might not have known enough to go at all. I've had a beautiful time. I'll put you in with the bedful of kiddies."

"And the clothes basket?"

"And the clothes basket."

"You haven't got your shirt—mercy gracious! I thought that's what you came after," reminded Evangeline.

"Was it?" the Reformed Doctor said. "Give it to me, Evangeline."

"Not naked! Without wrappin' up! I never did see!"

"It's such a good-looking shirt—well, then, wrap it up, wrap it up. I've got a newspaper in my pocket. Put that round it, Evangeline." He turned again to his hostess. "It will be a good story if I put—the clothes basket—in it. They won't send it back. Good-by."

He was off to inspect Elly Precious' grazing-ground. Evangeline, at the window where she had gone to make sure her darlin' dear was safe, presented to Miss Theodosia a square, bony little back that was curiously like that of a dwarfed old woman.

The trail of innocent Elly Precious was over that stoopy little figure. Miss Theodosia looked with softened eyes. Then a smile grew in them, wrinkling their corners whimsically. She was noticing something else besides the little old-lady back. Evangeline's braids toed in! Tight and flaxen, they stood out in rounded curves, converging suddenly to the bit of faded ribbon that tied them together. There was something suspicious looking about that ribbon—"Stefana starched it!" smiled Miss Theodosia's thought.

The small figure whirled face about.

"There, he can see to him awhile." Evangeline was always cheerfully oblivious to any confusion of ideas arising from her use of personal pronouns. "I'm tired. Children are a great care," said Evangeline. She seated herself in an easy chair and dangled thin legs.

"If you drank tea—I'll make you a cup of cocoa, Evangeline."

"Oh, mercy gracious, no! I'm not as tired as cocoa. Jus' sit-'n'-a'-chair tired. You know how it feels—no, you don't either. I forgot. I guess you are pretty lucky. No, I don't guess so either!" Evangeline suddenly straightened on the edge of the big chair and eyed Miss Theodosia sternly, as though that innocent soul had been the one guilty of disloyalty to darlin' dears.

"Children are a great comfort," declaimed Evangeline with emphasis. She might have been the mother of six comforts. Tenderness crept into her eyes, and her freckles seemed to fade out, and even the small blunt nose of her take on middle-agedness and motherliness. '"Specially when you undress 'em. They're so darlin' an' soft! You ever undressed one—a reg'lar baby one? Of course not one o' your own when you never had any, but I thought p'raps you might've undressed a grandbaby or somethin'—"

Miss Theodosia shook a humbled head.

"No," she murmured, "I never undressed even a grandbaby." And curiously she failed either to smile at the child's little notion or to wince at the advanced age it implied for her. She looked across the room from her big chair to Evangeline's with rather a wistful look. She was envying Evangeline.

"I'm sorry," the child said gently, a little embarrassed by the unexpected solemnity of the moment. To relieve it, she had recourse to a sudden funny memory of her own undressings of Elly Precious. She broke hurriedly into laughter.

"I have to have an extra pig for my baby!" she shrilled. "Takes six instead o' five! You know where it ends, 'This little pig said: "Quee! Quee! Quee! can't get over the barn-door sill"?' Mercy gracious, you don't know the little pigs, I s'pose—" More embarrassment. Even Evangeline was losing presence of mind.

"Oh, yes!" Miss Theodosia brightened perceptibly. "I know the one that went to market and the one that stayed at home—all five of them I know."

"But you don't know Elly Precious's extra little pig!" crowed the reassured Evangeline. "Just us know that one. I made him up. When you have six toes,—I mean when Elly Precious has,—you have to have six pigs. After the one that can't get over the barn-door sill, I say: 'This little pig said—' wait, I'll say the last two together so you'll see they rhyme beautifully. Reg'lar poetry.

"'This little pig said, "Quee! Quee! Quee! can't get over the barn-door sill.'"

"'This little pig said, "He! He! He! when you tickle, I can't keep still!'"

"Elly Precious wiggles it when I tickle! We laugh like everything. I think it is pretty good poetry," added Evangeline modestly.

"It is beautiful poetry. I never could have begun to make up such a lovely, ticklish little pig!"

Evangeline leaned back again in the soft cushiony embrace of the great chair and actually achieved a moment of silence. The talkative clock on Miss Theodosia's mantel filled in the space. Then once more Evangeline:

"But I shall never have any."

"Any—pigs?" smilingly.

"Children. Not any. I've decided I'll rest. They're such a care. But of course I can run in an' undress Stefana's an' Elly Precious's—mercy gracious, Elly Precious's!"

It required too great a mental effort to visualize them. Elly Precious's children were funny! Evangeline giggled softly. "Then I'll be a gran'mother, won't I! I've always wanted to be a gran'mother an' say what I did when I was a child an' how I always minded." A fresh giggle. "'I never had to be told to twice, my dears,' I'll say to Elly Precious's children! They'll all be my dears. I'll help bring 'em up. Isn't it queer," broke forth Evangeline suddenly, "how when you get to be old you never were bad when you were young? The badnesses have kind of—kind of faded out. I bet there were badnesses!"

And Miss Theodosia found herself nodding decisively. She, too, bet there were.

A hilarious little crow suddenly sounded from without the window; it was accompanied by a deep man-sound of mirth. Miss Theodosia and Evangeline smiled across at each other indulgently.

"Elly Precious is havin' a good time. That's his good-time noise. Oh, I think he's a nice person, don't you?"

"Nice? I love him!" cried Miss Theodosia warmly. Her face that was still the face of a girl was tenderly flushed. "I love every inch of him, Evangeline."

"Merry gra—that's a lot of lovin'! I guess you are ahead o' me!"

"Evangeline Flagg, aren't you ashamed! When he is the dearest, cunningest—"

"Not—not cunnin'est. But he's got beautiful whiskers. I mean if he didn't shave 'em off. When he came, he had 'em on. You can't love his whiskers when you never saw—"

Miss Theodosia held up a limp hand to stem this terrible tide of words.

"Oh, stop! wait, Evangeline!" she begged. "Who are you talking about?"

Why stop for grammatic rules at a time like this?

"Why, he—him. I said I liked him, an' you said you lov—"

"I have been talking about Elly Precious, naturally," Miss Theodosia returned stiffly. "You are very careless with your pronouns, Evangeline," she added with an effect of severity. Her cheeks that persisted still in being a girl's cheeks had grown a warm, becoming pink. In pink Miss Theodosia was lovely.

"Don't you think you'd better relieve Elly Precious' caretaker by this time? He may not enjoy being left in charge quite so long."

"Not enjoy! Come an' see him not enjoy!" sang Evangeline from the window. She was flattening her nose against the pane and bubbling with sympathetic glee. Miss Theodosia went over and stood beside her.

Out there the two of them were frolicking together—two joyous children. It was the good old game of Peek-a-boo, but seemed a new, surprising game to Miss Theodosia. The big playmate on the grass spread a handkerchief over the little playmate's face, and with a shriek of joy the little playmate did the rest. Then the big child's turn—turn and turn about. Deep voice and thin, sweet tinkle of baby voice joined in a curiously harmonious chorus that rang through the window pane into the two pairs of listening ears.

It was a new light in which to see—a new sound in which to hear John Bradford. Miss Theodosia had a guilty consciousness of being an eavesdropper, yet she kept on eavesdropping. At a particular climax in the little play, she laughed aloud softly. Evangeline wriggled with enjoyment. Her fingers drummed applause on the glass, and the big player glanced quickly up and saw the two lookers-on. He did not hesitate in the play, did not stop the next little gleeful peek. Miss Theodosia loved it in him for not stopping. They were not ashamed—Elly Precious and John Bradford.