not a very observing woman or she would have seen
why he "was scarcely a mite of trouble." If there was never a crumb
left on the doorstep where Robin sat to eat his lunch, it was because
Big Brother's careful fingers had picked up every one. If she never
found any tracks of little bare feet on the freshly scrubbed kitchen
floor, it was because his watchful eyes had spied them first, and he
had wiped away every trace.

He had an instinctive feeling that if he would keep Robin with him he
must not let any one feel that he was a care or annoyance. So he never
relaxed his watchfulness in the daytime, and slept with one arm thrown
across him at night.

Sometimes, after supper, when it was too late to go outdoors again,
the restless little feet kicked thoughtlessly against the furniture,
or the meddlesome fingers made Mrs. Dearborn look at him warningly
over her spectacles and shake her head.

[Illustration]

Sometimes the shrill little voice, with its unceasing questions,
seemed to annoy the old farmer as he dozed over his weekly newspaper
beside the lamp. Then, if it was too early to go to bed, Steven would
coax him over in a corner to look at the book that Mrs. Estel had
given him, explaining each picture in a low voice that could not
disturb the deaf old couple.

It was at these times that the old feeling of loneliness came back so
overwhelmingly. Grandpa and Grandma, as they called them, were kind in
their way, but even to their own children they had been
undemonstrative and cold. Often in the evenings they seemed to draw so
entirely within themselves, she with her knitting and he with his
paper or accounts, that Steven felt shut out, and apart. "Just the
strangers within thy gates," he sometimes thought to himself. He had
heard that expression a long time ago, and it often came back to him.
Then he would put his arm around Robin and hug him up close, feeling
that the world was so big and lonesome, and that he had no one else to
care for but him.

Sometimes he took him up early to the little room under the roof, and,
lying on the side of the bed, made up more marvellous stories than any
the book contained.

Often they drew the big wooden rocking-chair close to the window, and,
sitting with their arms around each other, looked out on the moonlit
stillness of the summer night. Then, with their eyes turned starward,
they talked of the far country beyond; for Steven tried to keep
undimmed in Robin's baby memory a