s clothes all mud and behind him a strange
gentleman.

It was evident that something had happened to the boy, but the mother
did not scream. She was not that kind. Her lips tightened as she
braced herself for whatever this new decree of Fate might be. In a
jiffy Bobby, who recognized that look as the same he had seen when they
had brought Daddy home, was at her side.

"Cheer up, Mumsy," he exclaimed. "Nothin' doin' in caskits this time."

She lifted her thin, angular face from the boy to Donaldson. The
latter explained,

"He got tangled up a bit with an automobile, but I guess the machine
got the worst of it. At any rate your boy is all right."

The mother passed her hand over the lad's head, expressing a world of
tenderness in the act.

"It was kind of you to bring him home," she said.

The directness of the woman, her self control, her simplicity, enlisted
Donaldson's interest at once. He had expected hysterics. He would
have staked his last dollar that the woman came from Vermont. His
observant eyes had in these few minutes covered everything in the room,
including the long-handled dipper by the faucet used for dipping into
pails sweating silver mist, the wooden clock upon the mantelpiece, and
the Hicks Almanac hanging below it. He felt as though he were standing
in a Berringdon kitchen with acres of green outside the windows
sweeping in a circle off to the little hills, the acres of forest
green, and the big hills beyond.

The mother stepped forward and brushed the mud from Bobby's coat. The
baby screwed up his face for a howl to call attention to his neglect in
the midst of all this excitement.

"What's this?" exclaimed Bobby, picking him up with as substantial an
air of paternity as though he were forty. "What's this? Goneter cry
afore a stranger?"

He held the child up to Donaldson.

"The kid," he announced laconically. "What yuh think of him?"

[Illustration: _"The kid," he announced laconically. "What yuh think
of him?"_]

"Corker," answered Donaldson. "Let me hold him."

"Sure. Get a chair for the gent, Sis."

In another minute Donaldson found himself sitting by the kitchen stove
with a chuckling youngster on his knee. No one paid any attention to
him; just took him for granted as a friend until he felt as though he
had been one of the family all his life. Besides, the centre of the
stage rightly belonged to Bobby, who was occupying it with something of
a swagger in his w