with the dimpled sweetness of a youthful seraph. "I do love you so, daddy," she cooed gently. "I feel just like kissing you!"

[Pg 13]

Her father caught the child in his arms and pressed half a dozen kisses on her rosy cheeks before depositing her in her chair. "Remember, girlie, you must be as quiet as a mouse or your mother will whisk you off to bed before you can say Jack Robinson." He cast a laughing glance across the table at his wife. "You see we all stand in proper awe of you, my dear!"

"Oh, Sam!" murmured Elizabeth reprovingly; but she laughed with the children.

[Pg 14]

[Pg 14]

II

When the militant young Brewsters were at last safely bestowed in bed, Elizabeth sank into her low chair with an involuntary sigh of relief—or fatigue, she hardly knew which.

"Tired, dear?" asked her husband, glancing up from his paper. "I suppose you've put in a pretty hard day breaking in the foreigner. But you're doing wonders. The dinner wasn't half bad, and the mechanic didn't break a single dish in the process; at least I didn't hear the usual crash from the rear."

She smiled back at him remotely. She did not think it worth while to report the scorched potatoes, or the broken platter belonging to her best set of dishes.

"I was thinking about Doris," she said.

Her husband's eyes lighted with a reminiscent smile. "Little monkey!" he exclaimed. "She slid down the banisters like a streak of lightning and flew into my arms before I had time to take off my overcoat. She said she was sitting on the stairs, waiting for me to come.[Pg 15] Not many children think enough about seeing their old daddy to sit on the stairs in the dark!"

[Pg 15]

"I'm really sorry to undeceive you, Sam; but I had sent that child up to her room, and told her to stay there till I called her!" Elizabeth informed him crisply.

"Wherefore the incarceration, O lady mother?"

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