I can’t tell you how much I liked him.  He seemed so big and fine—­and tender.  I came across a poem the other day, and he made me think of it: 

              “... the strong”
    The Master whispered, “are the tenderest!”

Before he went away, he took my hand in his.  “I want you to play a game with me.  Do you remember when we were children that we used to hide things, and then guide the ones who hunted by saying ‘warmer’ when we were near them, and ‘colder’ when they wandered away?  Will you say ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ to me?  That won’t be breaking your promise, will it?”

“No.”

“Then let’s begin now.  To-morrow morning I shall go to the north and east—­”

“Cold!”

“To the south and west—­”

“Warmer.”

“Up a hill?”

“Very warm.  But you mustn’t ask me any more.”

“All right.  But I am coming again, and we will play the game.”

Billy went down with him, and when he came back we stood looking into the fire, and he said, “You didn’t tell him?”

“Of course not.  That’s the lovely, lovely thing that he must find out for himself—­”

The next day I went to see Lady Crusoe.  William Watters took me.  “They’s a man been hangin’ round this mawnin’,” he complained, “an’ a dawg—­”

“What kind of man, William?”

“He’s huntin’, and Miss Lily she doan’ like things killed—­”

Half-way up, we passed the man.  His hat came off when he saw me.  “It’s cold weather we’re having,” he said pleasantly.

“It’s getting warmer,” I flung back at him, and William drove on with a grunt.

I had Junior with me, and when I reached the house I went straight up-stairs.  In the very center of the room in the hooded mahogany cradle was another crumpled rose-leaf of a child.  But this was not a “Junior.”

“Robin-son,” Lady Crusoe had whispered, when I had first bent over her and had asked the baby’s name.

“Because of the robins?” I had asked.

She shook her head.  “I couldn’t call him Crusoe, could I?”

So there he lay, little Robinson Crusoe, in a desert expanse of polished floor, and there he crowed a welcome to my own beautiful baby!

Lady Crusoe was in a big chair.  She was not strong, and William Watters had brought his sister Mandy to wait on her.  She was very pale, this lovely lady, and there were shadows under her eyes.  As I sat down beside her, she said:  “I shall have to have your Billy sell some more things for me.  You see the servants must be paid, and my Robin must be comfy.  There’s a console-table that ought to bring a lot from a city dealer.”

“I wish that you needn’t be worried,” I said.  “I wish—­I wish—­that you’d let me send for Robin’s father—­”

“Robin’s father!” she drew a quick breath, “how funny it sounds!—­Robin’s father—­”

I waited for that to sink in, and then I said:  “I know how you feel.  When I think of Billy as Junior’s father it is different from thinking of him as my husband, and it makes a funny sensation in my throat as if I wanted to cry—­”