“Impossible, dearie.”

“But I want you to ride her if you’d like to, and I want mother and me to go to Chicago with you if you’re going to feel sorry.”

“You really do, eh?”

Jewel hesitated, then turned her head and held out her hand to Mr. Evringham, who took it.  “If grandpa won’t feel sorry,” she answered.  “Oh, I don’t know what I want.  I wish I didn’t love to be with so many people!”

Her little face, drawn with its problem, precipitated the broker’s plans and made him reckless.  He said to his son now, that which, in his carefully prepared programme, he had intended to say about three months hence, provided a nearer acquaintance with his daughter Julia did not prove disappointing.

“I suppose you are not devotedly attached to Chicago, Harry?”

The young man looked up, surprised.  “Not exactly.  So far she has treated me like a cross between a yellow dog and a step-child; but I shall be devoted enough if I ever succeed there.”

“Don’t succeed there,” returned the broker curtly.  “Succeed here.”

Harry shook his head.  “Oh, New York’s beyond me.  I have a foothold in Chicago.”

“Yes,” returned the broker, who had the born and bred New Yorker’s contempt for the Windy City.  “Yes, I know you’ve got your foot in it, but take it out.”

“Great Scott!  You’d have me become a rolling stone again?”

“No.  I’ll guarantee you a place where, if you don’t gather moss, you’ll even write your_self_ down as long-eared.”

Harry’s eyes brightened, and he straightened up, moving Jewel to one side, the better to see his father.  “Do you mean it?” he asked eagerly.

The broker nodded.  “Take your time to settle matters in Chicago,” he said.  “If you show up here in September it will be early enough.”

The young man turned his eyes toward his wife and she met his smile with another.  Her heart was beating fast.  This powerful man of whom, until this morning, she had stood in awe, was going to put a stop to the old life and lift their burdens.  So much she perceived in a flash, and she knew it was for the sake of the little child whose cheeks were glowing like roses as she looked from one to another, taking in the happy promise involved in the words of the two men.

“Father, will you come back here?” she asked, breathing quickly.

“I’d be mighty glad to, Jewel,” he replied.

The child leaned toward the broker, to whose hand she still clung.  Starry lights were dancing in her eyes.

“Grandpa, are father and mother and I going to live with you—­always?” she asked rapturously.

“Always—­if you will, Jewel.”

He certainly had not intended to say it until autumn leaves were falling, and he should have made certain that it was not putting his head into a noose; but the child’s face rewarded him now a thousand-fold, and made the moment too sweet for regret.