ack in the arms of the nurse, who bore it away to the pretty nursery
close at hand. "It's an old miracle always new, and never so wonderful
as when it comes to us for the first time--how that little life can be
neither you nor I, yet both of us in one. Big possibilities are wrapped
up in that bit of flesh and blood; it's going to be a great interest,
the watching them begin to show."

"Oh, yes!" she murmured, lying quietly with her hand beneath her cheek,
too weary and too happy for speech.

"I wonder if I dare to tell you how soon it was after I knew you that I
began to think of you as playing this part in my life," he said very
softly.

"Did you? I'm so glad." It was hardly more than a whisper.

"Are you glad? I often think a girl little dreams of how often that
vision comes to a man long before she has thought of it at all. I was
only a very young man when I began to think of it. Even when there was
no woman in my mind I used to plan what I would do for my own son when I
should have him. And when I saw you I thought--with the greatest
reverence, darling: 'If _she_ might be my son's mother!'"

He did not need the look her eyes gave him to tell him how this touched
her. When he went quietly away to leave her for the long sleep she
needed it was with the consciousness that the bond between them was
more absolute than it had ever been.

It was in the following June, on the anniversary of the marriage of the
James McKenzie Stuarts, that the Jefferson Craigs had their first
opportunity to see with their own eyes how that marriage was prospering.
Letters from Jeannette had come to Georgiana from time to time, with an
occasional postscript from Stuart, and these letters always breathed of
happiness.

"But one can't be perfectly sure from letters," Georgiana argued. "After
all the opposition and skepticism they would never own to anybody that
life didn't flow like a rose-bordered stream. But one glimpse of their
faces will tell the story. If Jeannette has a certain look I've often
seen on the faces of girls who have been married about a year I shall
guess what causes it. As for Jimps--he will be as easily read as an open
book. Jeff, you won't let anything prevent our being there for the fete
they ask us for?"

"Nothing that I can foresee and provide for," Craig promised. "I'm quite
as eager as you to discover how the transplanting of the hothouse plant
into the hardy outdoor soil of the country has worked out. There