to hear from him and how he and his wife—whom she one day hoped to know—were getting along.
Would he drop her a few lines in Peoria? And he had best send it to General Delivery, since she would be changing her boarding house when she returned, and did not yet know where she would be.
Three weeks later—in Peoria—Mary, not Louella, got a letter. It made her laugh, then wonder if she were getting old.
She was an aunt!
She solved the problem by sending to her new niece in New York a dozen hand-knitted pairs of bootees and caps.
Chapter XIV
Dorothy Blaine, Templeton's daughter, was born in the spring of 1910 and there was great joy in the Fifth Avenue house. As Templeton wrote to his sister, Mary, Helen had given up all hope of ever having a child. She had even been considering adopting one, for she loved children. Then the little stranger came smiling in. At least Helen declared that her baby was born smiling.
Templeton was in his element. He was forty-seven years old and looked older, for his hair was prematurely gray.
"My word!" he cried. "This is certainly splendid, though Fm not sure whether I'm this lady's father or her grandfather."
Helen looked at him and smiled. "What shall we name her?" she asked.
"Bright eyes," he chuckled.
"It would be quite nice," she declared, "but an awful silly name for her when she grows up. I wanted to name her Glee but did not, for the same reason. I suppose you'd like to call her, 'Northern Pacific' or 'Great Northern.'"
"At that," Templeton drawled, "they are good names. But I guess we better not decide on either because they might have a bad effect on her, cause her to make tracks from home or
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