There was a pattering footfall on the piazza, and Miss Ellen Harding went to look out. She saw a little figure standing there, among the rosebuds,—not one of the neighbors’ children, but a bonny little lassie, with curls of spun gold, and great, fearless brown eyes, and cheeks and lips as bright as the red roses on the climbing rosebush beside her.

A little morsel, not more than five years old, she was; with a white dress, and a broad scarlet sash, and a hat which she swung in her fingers by its scarlet strings. She looked so bright and vivid, and she was such an unexpected vision in that place, that it almost seemed as if one of the poppies in the yard beyond had turned into a little girl, and come up the steps.

“Did you want me?” Miss Harding asked, going up to the tiny blossom of a creature.

“No, if you please.”

“My father, then, Dr. Harding,—were you sent for him?”

The child surveyed her, as if in gentle surprise at so much curiosity.

“No,” she answered, after a moment. “I am Rosebud; and I don’t want anybody. Jane told me to come here, and she would follow presently.”

She said the words with a singular correctness and propriety, as if they were a lesson which she had been taught.

“And who is Jane?” Miss Harding asked.

Evidently the process of training had gone no further. The child looked puzzled and uncomfortable.

“Jane?” she answered hesitatingly. “Why, she is Jane.”

“Not your mamma?”

“No,—just Jane.”

“And what did Jane want here?”

“She told me to come, and she would follow presently,” said the child, saying her little lesson over again.

Evidently there was nothing more to be got out of her; but Miss Harding coaxed her to come into the cool parlor, and wait for Jane; and gave her some strawberries and cream in a gayly painted china saucer, that all children liked. Rosebud was no exception to the rest. When she had finished her berries, she tapped on the saucer with her spoon.

“I will have it for mine, while I stay,—may I?” she said. “Not to take away, but just to call, you know.”

“Surely,” said Miss Harding, more puzzled than ever. Had the sprite, then, come to stay? Were there, by chance, fairies after all,—and was this some changeling from out their ranks? She tried to entertain her small guest; and she found her quite accessible to the charms of pictures, and contented for an hour with a box of red and white chessmen. Towards night her curiosity got the better of her courtesy; and, looking from the window, she inquired,—

“I wonder where your Jane can be?”

“Presently; Jane said presently,” answered the child, with quiet composure, and returned to the chessmen.

Miss Harding heard her father drive into the yard, and slipped out to speak to him. She told her story, and the doctor gave a low, soft whistle. It was a way he had when any thing surprised him.

“It looks to me,” said he, “as if Jane, whoever she may be, intended to make us a present of Miss Rosebud. Well, we must make the small person comfortable to-night, and to-morrow we will see what to do with her.”

The small person was easily made comfortable. She ate plenty of bread-and-milk for her supper, and more strawberries; and when it was over, she went round and stood beside the doctor.

“I think you are a dood man,” she said, with the quaint gravity which characterized all her utterances. “I should like to sit with you.”

The doctor lifted her to his knee, and she laid her little golden head against his coat. There was a soft place under that coat, as many a sick and poor person in the town knew very well. I think the little golden head hit the soft place. He stroked the shining curls very tenderly. Then he asked,—

“What makes you think I’m a ‘dood’ man, Pussy-cat?”

“My name is not Pussy-cat,—I am Rosebud,” she replied gravely; “and I think you are dood because you look so, out of your eyes.”

The little morsel spoke most of her words with singular clearness and propriety. It was only when a “g” came in that she substituted a “d” for it, and went on her way rejoicing.

As the doctor held her, the soft place under his coat grew very soft indeed. A little girl had been his last legacy from his dying wife; and she had grown to be about as large as Rosebud, and then had gone home to her mother. It almost seemed to him as if she had come back again; and it was her head beneath which his heart was beating. He beckoned to his daughter.

“Have you some of Aggie’s things?” he asked. “This child must be made comfortable, and she ought to go to bed soon.”

“No,” the child said; “I’m doing to sit here till the moon comes. That means ‘do to bed.’”

“Yes, I have them,” Miss Harding answered.

She had loved Aggie so well, that it seemed half sacrilege to put her dead sister’s garments on this stranger child; and half it was a pleasure that again she had a little girl to dress and cuddle. She went out of the room. Soon she came running back, and called her father.

“O, come here! I found this in the hall. It is a great basket full of all sorts of clothes, and it is marked ‘For Rosebud.’ See,—here is every thing a child needs.”

The doctor had set the little girl down, but she was still clinging to his hand.

“I think,” he said, “that Jane has been here, and that she does not mean to take away our Rosebud.”

But the little one, still clinging to him, said,—

“I think it is not ‘presently’ yet,—Jane wouldn’t come till ‘presently.’”

“Do you love Jane?” the doctor asked, looking down at the flower-like face.

“Jane is not mamma. She is only Jane,” was the answer.

When the moon rose, the little girl went willingly to bed; and all night long Miss Ellen Harding held her in her arms, as she used to hold her little sister, before the angels took her. Since Aggie’s death, people said Miss Ellen had grown cold and stiff and silent. She felt, herself, as if she had been frozen; but the ice was melting, as she lay there, feeling the soft, round little lump of breathing bliss in her arms; and a tender flower of love was to spring up and bloom in that heart that had grown hard and cold.

There was no talk of sending Rosebud away, though some people wondered much at the doctor, and even almost blamed him for keeping this child, of whom he knew nothing. But he wanted her, and Miss Ellen wanted her; and, indeed, she was the joy and life and blessing of the long-silent household.

She was by no means a perfect child. A well-mannered little creature she was,—some lady had brought her up evidently,—but she was self-willed and obstinate. When she had said, “I’m doing to do” such and such a thing, it was hard to move her from her purpose; unless, indeed, the doctor interposed, and to him she always yielded instantly. But, just such as she was, they found her altogether charming. The doctor never came home without something in his pocket to reward her search; Miss Ellen was her bond-slave; and Mistress Mulloney in the kitchen was ready to work her hands off for her.

Often, when she had gone to bed, the doctor and Miss Ellen used to talk over her strange coming.

“We shall lose her some day,” the doctor would say, with a sigh. “No one ever voluntarily abandoned such a child as that. She is only trusted to our protection for a little while, and presently we shall have to give her up.”

“Should you be sorry, father,” Miss Ellen would inquire, “that we had had her at all?”

And the doctor would answer thoughtfully “No, for she has made me young again. I will not grumble when the snows come because we have had summer, and know how bright it is.”

But the child lived with them as if she were going to live with them for ever. If she had any memories of days before she came there, she never alluded to them. After the first, she never mentioned Jane,—she never spoke of a father or mother. But she was happy as the summer days were long,—a glad, bright, winsome creature as ever was the delight of any household.

And so the days and the weeks and the months went on, and it was October. And one day the bell rang, and Mistress Mulloney went to the door, and in a moment came to the room where Miss Ellen was sitting, with Rosebud playing beside her, and beckoned to her mistress.

“It’s some one asking for the child,” she said. “Can’t we jist hide her away? It’ll be hard for the doctor if she’s took.”

“No; we must see who it is, and do what is right,” Miss Ellen answered; but her lips trembled a little. She went into the hall, and there, at the door, stood a woman, looking like a nursery-maid of the better sort.

“I have come,” the stranger began; but Rosebud had caught the sound of her voice, and came on the scene like a flash of light.

“It is ‘presently!’” she cried; “and there, oh, there is mamma!” And down the path she flew, and into the very arms of a lady who was waiting at a little distance.

Miss Harding went down the steps. “You have come, I see, to claim our Rosebud, and she is only too ready to be claimed. I thought we had made her happy.”

The child caught the slight accent of reproach in Miss Ellen’s voice, and turned towards her.

“You have been dood, oh, so very, very dood!” she said, “but this is mamma.”

“I trusted my darling to you in a very strange way,” the lady began, “but not, believe me, without knowing in whose hands I placed her. I was in mortal terror, then, lest she should be taken from me, and I dared not keep her until she had been legally made mine, and mine only. But you have made me your debtor for life, and I shall try to show it some day.”

“But, at least, you will come in and wait until my father returns. He loves Rosebud so dearly, that it would be a cruelty to take her away until he has had time to bid her good-by.”

“You are right,” the stranger answered courteously. “Jane, go with the carriage to the hotel, and I will come or send for you when I want you.”

In a few moments more the strange lady was seated in the doctor’s parlor. Miss Harding saw now where Rosebud had got her bright, wilful beauty.

“I must explain,” the mother said, as she lifted her child upon her lap. “I am Mrs. Matthewson. My husband is dead, and Rosebud has a very, very large fortune of her own. Her uncles, who were to have the management of her property, by her father’s will, claimed her also; and I have had such a fight for her! They were unscrupulous men, and I feared to keep Rosebud with me, lest by some means they should get some hold on her. So I resolved to lend her to you for the summer; and, indeed, I never can reward you for all your care of her.”“You can reward us only by not altogether taking her away from us. We have learned to love her very dearly.”

And, after a while, the doctor came home and heard all the story. And it was a week before Mrs. Matthewson had the heart to take away the child she had lent them. Then it was not long before the doctor and Miss Ellen had to go to see Rosebud. And then, very soon, Mrs. Matthewson had to bring her back again; and, really, so much going back and forth was very troublesome; and they found it more convenient, after a while, to join their households.

Before Rosebud came, the doctor had thought himself an old man, though he was only forty-five; but, as he said, Rosebud had made him young again; and Rosebud’s mamma found it possible to love him very dearly. But Miss Ellen always said it was Rosebud and nobody else whom her father married, and that he had been in love with the borrowed blossom from the first.