Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/305

 "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 299