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“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.

She shook her head. “I couldn’t call him Crusoe, could I?”

So there he lay, little Robinson Crusoe, in a desert expanse of polished floor, and there he crowed a welcome to my own beautiful baby!

Lady Crusoe was in a big chair. She was not strong, and William Watters had brought his sister Mandy to wait on her. She was very pale, this lovely lady, and there were shadows under her eyes. As I sat down beside her, she said: “I shall have to have your Billy sell some more things for me. You see the servants must be paid, and my Robin must be comfy. There’s a console-table that ought to bring a lot from a city dealer.”