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 pensations. He is a beautiful child, really a beautiful child!”

The pair of deft hands, glittering with sparkling rings, slipped under the baby and lifted it, and the mother who had it in her heart to be a mother to any baby, to all babies that needed her, sat down in the Bee Master’s chair, its first occupant since his going, and lifted the baby and held it against her breast and to her face and laughed to it and said sweet little words of utter nonsense and praised it and curved around it and cuddled it up and then paused and looked at Jamie.

“I didn’t know,” said the soft voice, “that you were married.”

“I hardly knew it myself,” said Jamie. “It was such a very hurried marriage on account of circumstances I may explain to you some day. I’d been overseas and I brought back a wound and there were reasons as to why we had not been much together. I am shocked beyond expression that the baby’s mother lost her life. I had not even once thought that such a thing might occur, and I had depended on Margaret Cameron. I didn’t know that the child had been born until they telephoned me from the hospital. I decided I’d stay with the baby and let his mother’s family care for her. I could not leave the garden and I was sure of Margaret and got back to find that she had been telephoned for to go on some kind of a jaunt and she’d started suddenly. Before I knew what the little Scout was doing, you had your call. I’m afraid it’s too big an imposition for words.”