“Always.  Does it appear an odd arrangement in your eyes?”

“Father,” said Barbara, “here is your paper.  I have cut the leaves.”

“Thank you, my dear; put it down.  You should, consider, Emily, my great age and exaltation in the eyes of these youngsters.  Don’t you perceive that I am a middle-aged man, madam?”

“Middle-aged, indeed!  You are not thirty-six till the end of September, you know—­the 28th of September.  And oh, John, you cannot think how young you look! just as if you had stolen all these children, and they were not really yours.  You have so many of them, too, while I have only one, and he such a little one—­he is only two years old.”

While she spoke a bell began to ring, and the two elder children, wishing her good-bye, left the room.

“Do you think those girls are growing like their mother?” asked John.

“I think they are a little.  Perhaps that pretty way they have of taking up their eye-glasses when they come forward to look at anything, makes them seem more like than they are.”

John scarcely ever mentioned his wife, but before Emily most people spoke without much reserve.

“Only one of the whole tribe is like her in mind and disposition,” he continued.

“And that’s a good thing,” thought Emily, but she did not betray her thought.

While this talk went on the two younger children had got possession, of Mrs. Nemily’s watch (which hung from her neck by a long Trichinopoly chain), and were listening to a chime that it played.  Emily took the boy on her knee, and it did not appear that he considered himself too big to be nursed, but began to examine the watch, putting it to his ear, while he composedly rested his head on her shoulder.

“Poor little folk,” thought John, “how naturally they take to the caresses of a young mother!”

Another bell then rang.

“What order is kept in your house!” said Emily, as both the children departed, one with a kiss on her dimpled cheek and the other on his little scratched fist, which already told of much climbing.

“That is the school-room bell,” John answered; and then Mrs. Frederic Walker laughed, and said, with a look half whimsical, half wistful——­

“Oh, John, you’re going to be so cross?”

“Are you going to make me cross?  You had better tell me at once, then, what you are come for.  Has Giles returned?”

“He came in late last night.  I know what he went for, John.  He thought it best to tell me.  He is now gone on to the station about some affairs of his own.  It seems that you both took Joey Swan’s part, and were displeased with that Laura.”

“Of course.  She made the poor fellow very miserable for a long time.  Besides, I am ashamed of the whole derogatory affair.  Did Giles see that she burnt those letters—­foolish, cold-hearted creature?”

“‘Foolish,’ I dare say; but ‘cold-hearted,’ I don’t know.  St. George declared to me that he thought she was as much in love now as that goose Joseph ever was.”