camp fire: 'You will hardly believe it, my heathen hearers, out
in this well-ordered jungle, where the female is kept in her proper
place--but my wife has had the cheek to march up to-day into the next
decade, leaving me behind in the youthful twenties!'--Oh, Helen, I wish
we had a little kiddie playing around! I am tired of being the youngest
of the family."

She clasped both hands about his throat. He might have heard the beating
of her heart--had he been listening.

"Ronald, that is a joy which may yet be ours--some day. But my writer of
romances, who is such a stickler for grammatical accuracy, is surely the
_younger_ of a family of _two_!"

"Oh, grammar be--relegated to the library!" cried Ronnie, laughing. "And
you really presume too much on that one short month, Helen. You often
treat me as if I were an infant."

The smile in her eyes held the mother look, in its yearning tenderness.

"Ronnie dear, you _are_ so very much younger than I, in many ways; and
you always will be. Unlike the 'Infant of Days,' if you live to be a
hundred years old, you will still die young; a child in heart, full of
youth's joyous joy in living. You must not mind if your wife
occasionally treats you as though you were a dear big baby, requiring
maternal care and petting. You are such a veritable boy sometimes, and
it soothes the yearning for a little son of yours to cuddle in her arms,
when she plays that her big boy is something of a baby."

Ronald took her left hand from about his neck, and kissed it tenderly.

This was his only answer, but his silence meant more to Helen than
speech. Words flowed so readily to express his surface thoughts; but
when words suddenly and unexpectedly failed, a deeper depth had been
reached; and in that silence, his wife found comfort and content.

Ronnie was not all ripples. There was more beneath than the shifting
shallows. Deep, still pools were there, and rocks on which might
eventually be built a beacon-light for the souls of men. But, as yet, it
took Helen's clear and faithful eyes to discern the pools; to perceive
the possible strong foundations.

"Do you remember," he said presently, "the Dalmains coming over last
January, with their little Geoff? When I saw that jolly little chap
trotting about, and looking up at his mother with big shining
eyes, full of trustful love and innocent courage, absolutely
unafraid--notwithstanding her rather peremptory manner, and apparently
stern discipline-