What will you call your baby?"
"Agnes says it shall be _Euphemia_, meaning 'of good report.' You know
it came near being a young lady of bad report."
"As for me, Andrew, I shall make the contract for the steeple and
completion of the new church, and then take a foreign journey. Since I
stopped sneezing I have no way to disguise my sensibilities, and am more
an object of suspicion than ever."
Duff Salter peeped at the beautiful mother and hung a chain of gold
around the baby's neck, and was about slipping out when Podge Byerly
appeared. She made a low bow and shrank away.
"Follow her," whispered Andrew Zane. "If she is cool now she will be
cold hereafter, unless you nurse her confidence."
With a sense of great youthfulness and demerit, Duff Salter entered the
parlors and found Podge sitting in the shadows of that thrice notable
room where death and grief had been so often carried and laid down. The
little teacher was pale and thin, and her eyes wore a saddened light.
"I am very glad to see you again," said Duff Salter. "I wanted your
forgiveness."
Striking the centre of sympathy by these few words, the late deaf man
saw Podge's throat agitated.
"If you knew," he continued, "how often I accused myself since your
illness, you would try to excuse me.
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