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 yet it was not a baby to hold his finger—it was a woman to hold his heart—that George Judson was wanting. He touched the soft cheek tenderly and turned restlessly into his wife's room. It was redolent of her; it breathed, it cried out of her; it was a sacred place to him. For a moment he stood and did it reverence.

But his devotion was brought to an end by the whir of a motor below, and he went down the stairs three steps at a time and out on the front porch. Fay was just being helped out of a strange car by a strange young man wearing a cap and an air of indolent grace—a foreign looking person, George decided instantly from his knowledge of local types. The stranger's manner was particularly attentive to the lady, which seemed natural enough, for Mrs. Judson in white, plaited skirt and striped blazer jacket, with a white, soft hat having a piquant dash to the brim, looked particularly vivid and fascinating.

"Oh, George," she cried as her husband appeared. "Come here and meet Sir Brian Hook."

"Sir Brian!—Oh—ah!" stammered George, who had come running down the steps to find himself confronting a pair of gray-blue eyes, a close-cropped mustache, and an agreeable if tentative smile, all on a good-looking face of apparently about thirty years of life's experience.