Small wonder that the bees took up the song and droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above her head the enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft Sierran air--or Heaven knows what--let slip flickering lights and shadows to play over that cast-iron face, until the child, looking down upon it with the quick, transforming power of love, thought that it smiled.
The two remaining members of the family were less distinctive.
"Gloriana"-- pronounced as two words: "Glory Anna"-- being the work of her father, who also named it, was simply a cylindrical roll of canvas wagon-covering, girt so as to define a neck and waist, with a rudely inked face--altogether a weak, pitiable, manlike invention; and "Johnny Dear," alleged to be the representative of John Doremus, a young storekeeper who occasionally supplied Mary with gratuitous sweets.

Mary never admitted this, and as we were all gentlemen along that road, we were blind to the suggestion.

"Johnny Dear" was originally a small plaster phrenological cast of a head and bust, begged from some shop window in the county town, with a body clearly constructed by Mary herself.

It was an ominous fact that it was always dressed as a BOY, and was distinctly the most HUMAN-looking of all her progeny.

Indeed, in spite of the faculties that were legibly printed all over its smooth, white, hairless head, it was appallingly lifelike.