he stared smilingly into the fire.

"The children were born here, then?" said Anne.

"The little girls, yes. And the oldest boy. Afterward there was another
boy, and a little girl--" he paused. "A little girl whom we lost," he
finished gravely.

"Both these babies were born here," Anne said, after a moment. Her
caller looked from one child to the other with an expression of
interest and understanding that no childless man can ever wear.

"Our Rose was born here, our first girl," he said. "Sometimes a foggy
morning even now will bring that morning back to me. My wife was very
ill, and I remember creeping out of her room, when she had gone to
sleep, and hearing the fog-horns outside,--it was early morning. We had
an old woman taking care of her,--no trained nurses in those days!--and
she was sitting here by this fireplace, with the tiny girl in her lap.
Do you know--" his smile met Anne's--"do you know, I was so tired, and
we had been so frightened for Rose, and it seemed to me that I had been
up and moving about through unfamiliar things for so many, many hours,
that I had almost forgotten the baby! I remember that it came to me
with a shock that Rose was safe, and asleep, and that morning had come,
and breakfast was ready, and here was the baby, the same baby we had
been so placidly expecting and planning for, and that, in short, it was
all right, and all over!"

"Oh, I KNOW!" Anne laid an impulsive hand for a second on his, and the
eyes of the young wife, and of the man who had been a young father
thirty years before, met in wonderful understanding. "That's--that's
the way it is," said Anne, a little lamely, with a swift thought for
another foggy morning, when the familiar horn, the waking noises of the
city, had fallen strangely on her own senses, after the terror and
triumph of the night. Neither spoke for a moment. Diego's voice broke
cheerily into the pause.

"I can undress myself," he announced, with modest complacence.

"Can you?" said Charles Rideout. "How about buttons?"

"I can't do buttons," Diego qualified firmly.

"Well, I think--I can--remember--how to unbutton--a boy!" said the man,
with his pleasant deliberation, as he began on the button that was
always catching itself on Diego's hair. Diego cheerfully extended
little arms and legs in turn for the disrobing process. Presently a
small heap of garments lay on the floor, and the children were quite
delicious in baggy blue flannels. All the four w