t forward in the firelight to peer at the clock.
"Goodness! Do you creatures think I'm going to give Eileen half an
hour's start with her maid?--and I carrying my twelve years' handicap,
too. No, indeed! I'm decrepit but I'm going to die fighting. Austin, get
up! You're horribly slow, anyhow. Phil, Austin's man--such as he
is--will be at your disposal, and your luggage is unpacked."

"Am I really expected to grace this festival of babes?" inquired Selwyn.
"Can't you send me a tray of toast or a bowl of gruel and let me hide my
old bones in a dressing-gown somewhere?"

"Oh, come on," said Austin, smothering the yawn in his voice and casting
his cigar into the ashes. "You're about ripe for the younger set--one of
them, anyhow. If you can't stand the intellectual strain we'll side-step
the show later and play a little--what do you call it in the
army?--pontoons?"

They strolled toward the door, Nina's arms linked in theirs, her slim
fingers interlocked on her breast.

"We are certainly going to be happy--we three--in this innocent _menage
a trois_," she said. "I don't know what more you two men could ask
for--or I, either--or the children or Eileen. Only one thing; I think it
is perfectly horrid of Gerald not to be here."

Traversing the hall she said: "It always frightens me to be perfectly
happy--and remember all the ghastly things that _could_ happen. . . .
I'm going to take a glance at the children before I dress. . . . Austin,
did you remember your tonic?"

She looked up surprised when her husband laughed.

"I've taken my tonic and nobody's kidnapped the kids," he said. She
hesitated, then picking up her skirts she ran upstairs for one more look
at her slumbering progeny.

The two men glanced at one another; their silence was the tolerant,
amused silence of the wiser sex, posing as such for each other's
benefit; but deep under the surface stirred the tremors of the same
instinctive solicitude that had sent Nina to the nursery.

"I used to think," said Gerard, "that the more kids you had the less
anxiety per kid. The contrary is true; you're more nervous over half a
dozen than you are over one, and your wife is always going to the
nursery to see that the cat hasn't got in or the place isn't afire or
spots haven't come out all over the children."

They laughed tolerantly, lingering on the sill of Selwyn's bedroom.

"Come in and smoke a cigarette," suggested the latter. "I have nothing
to do except to write