“Well, I doubt seriously if they will live to use the bonds if some one does not stop David from trying experiments with them,” answered Phoebe with a laugh.  “After dinner last night he came in with two little sleeping hammock machines which he insisted in putting up on the wall for them.  If the pulley catches you have to stand on a chair to extract them; and if it slips, down they come.  Milly was so grateful and let him play with them for an hour; she’s a sweet soul.”

“Has he sent any more food?” asked Mrs. Matilda as they all laughed.

“Two more cases of a new kind he saw advertised in a magazine.  Somebody must tell him that—­Milly is equal to the situation.  Billy Bob won’t; and so the cases continue to arrive.  The pantry is crowded with them and they have sent a lot to the Day Nursery,” and Phoebe slipped from the window-seat down on to the rug at Caroline’s feet in a perfect ecstasy of mirth.

“But he is just the dearest boy, Phoebe,” said Caroline Darrah as she paused in her sewing to caress the sleek, black, braided head tipped back against her knee.  There was the shadow of reproach in her voice as she smiled down into the gray eyes upturned to hers.

“Yes,” answered Phoebe, instantly on the defensive, “he is just exactly that, Caroline Darrah Brown—­and he doesn’t seem to be able to get over it.  I’m afraid it’s chronic with him.”

“He’s young yet,” Mrs. Buchanan remarked as she clipped a thread with her bright scissors.

“No,” said Phoebe slowly, “he is six years older than I am and that makes him thirty-two.  I have earned my living for ten years and a man five years younger who sits at a desk next to mine at the office is taking care of his mother and educating two younger brothers on a salary that is less than mine—­but David is a dear!  Did you see the little coats Polly sent the babies?” she asked quickly to close the subject and to cover a note of pain she had discovered in her own voice.

“They were lovely,” answered Mrs. Buchanan.  “Now let me show you how to roll and whip your ruffle, Caroline dear,” she added as she bent over Caroline’s completed hem.  In a moment they were both immersed in a scientific discussion of under-and-over stitch.

Phoebe clasped her knees in her arms and gazed into the fire.  Her own involuntary summing up of David Kildare had struck into her inner consciousness like a blow.  And Phoebe could not have explained to even herself what it was in her that demanded the hewer of wood and drawer of water in a man—­in David.  Decidedly Phoebe’s demands were for elementals and she questioned Kildare’s right to his leisurely life based on the Jeffersonian ideals of his forefathers.

And while they sewed and chatted the hour away, over in the library the major and David were in interested conclave.

“Now, I leave it to you, Major, if he isn’t just the limit,” said David on his return from his mission for the purpose of drawing Andrew from his lair.  “I couldn’t budge him.  He is writing away like all possessed with a two-apple-and-a-cracker lunch on the table beside him.  He seems to enjoy a death-starve.”