"That you wouldn't tell me?"
"Yes."
He threw back his head and laughed. "If she's in this part of the
country, I'll find her." And I knew that he would. He was the kind of
man you felt wouldn't know there were obstacles in the way when he went
after the thing he wanted.
I made him stay to supper. It was a drizzly cold night and he looked
very tired.
"Jove," he said, "you're comfortable here, with your fire and your
pussy-cat, and your teakettle on the hearth! This is the sort of thing I
like--"
"You wouldn't like living over a grocery store," I told him.
"Why not?"
"Oh, nobody around here ever has, and they are all descended from
signers of the Declaration of Independence and back of that from William
the Conqueror, and they stick their noses in the air."
"Shades of Jefferson!--why should they?"
"They shouldn't. But they do--"
He came back to the subject of his wife. "I didn't want her to warm my
slippers. It was only that I wanted her to feel like warming them," he
appealed to Billy, and Billy nodded. Billy positively purrs when I make
him comfortable after his day's work. He says that it is the homing
instinct in men and that women ought to encourage it.
"Does she warm yours?" he asked Billy.
"Not now, she's too busy--" and then as if the stage were set for it,
there came from the next room a little, little cry.
I went in and brought out--Junior! He was only a month old, but you know
how heavenly sweet they are with their rose-leaf skins, and their little
crumpled hands and their downy heads--Junior's down was brown, for Billy
and I are both dark.
"You see he keeps me busy," I said.
I was so proud I am perfectly sure it stuck out all over me, and as for
Billy he beamed on us in a funny fatherly fashion that he had adopted
from the moment that he first called me "Little Mother."
"Do you wonder that she hasn't time to warm my slippers?" was his
question.
The stranger held out his arms--"Let me hold the little chap." And he
sat there, without a smile, looking down at my baby. When he raised his
head he said in a dry sort of fashion, "I thought the pussy-cat and the
teakettle were enough--but this seems almost too good to be true--"
I can't tell you how much I liked him. He seemed so big and fine--and
tender. I came across a poem the other day, and he made me think of it:
"... the strong"
The Master whispered, "are the tenderest!"
Before he went away, he took my hand in his. "I want you to play a game
with me. Do you remember when we were children that we used to hide
things, and then guide the ones who hunted by saying 'warmer' when we
were near them, and 'colder' when they wandered away? Will you say
'warm' and 'cold' to me? That won't be breaking your promise, will it?"
"No."
"Then let's begin now. To-morrow morning I shall go to the north and
east--"
"Cold!"
"To the south and west--"
"Warmer."
"Up a hill?"
"Very warm. But you mustn't ask me any more."
"All right. But I am coming again, and we will play the game."
Billy went down with him, and when he came back we stood looking into
the fire, and he said, "You didn't tell him?"
"Of course not. That's the lovely, lovely thing that he must find out
for himself--"
The next day I went to see Lady Crusoe. William Watters took me. "They's
a man been hangin' round this mawnin'," he complained, "an' a dawg--"
"What kind of man, William?"
"He's huntin', and Miss Lily she doan' like things killed--"
Half-way up, we passed the man. His hat came off when he saw me. "It's
cold weather we're having," he said pleasantly.
"It's getting warmer," I flung back at him, and William drove on with a
grunt.
I had Junior with me, and when I reached the house I went straight
up-stairs. In the very center of the room in the hooded mahogany cradle
was another crumpled rose-leaf of a child. But this was not a "Junior."
"Robin-son," Lady Crusoe had whispered, when I had first bent over her
and had asked the baby's name.
"Because of the robins?" I had asked.