an," he answered. "I know what's best for me and
how to go to work to obtain it."

"I trust you do," I replied. "Well, I'll be going now. See you next
Sunday."

"Why next Sunday?" he asked sharply.

"Simply because you've lately acquired the excellent habit of calling on
that day."

"I'll not be there," he declared. "I have other fish to fry."

I took my leave, somewhat surprised. But three days later, as we were
taking our habitual Sabbatical refection of tea and biscuits, he
appeared again, bearing a box of what he calls the only chocolates in
New York fit to eat. But he came in a taxi, for he wouldn't be seen
carrying anything but his cane and gloves. For a second, as I looked at
him, he seemed slightly embarrassed, although I may have erred in so
thinking.

Frieda seized upon the chocolates, greedily. She is one of those dear
stout people, who assure you that they hardly ever eat anything and whom
one always finds endowed with a fine appetite.

"It's too bad about Baby Paul," she said. "He is yet too young to be
stuffed with sweets or amused with toys."

"I presume that a nursling is the only really normal human being,"
remarked Gordon. "He possesses but the most natural desires, has no
ambitions unconnected with feeding and sleeping, and expresses his
emotions without concealment. Affectation is foreign to him, and his
virtues and vices are still in abeyance."

"Paul," declared Frances, indignantly, "is extremely intelligent and has
no vices at all."

"I stand corrected, Mrs. Dupont. He is the exception, of course, and I
only spoke in general. Frieda, my dear, won't you be so obliging as to
open the piano and play something for us? I don't suppose it will awaken
the baby, will it?"

"He just loves music," asserted his mother. "When I play, he often opens
his eyes and listens quietly, ever so long. I know that it pleases him,
ever so much. His--oh! He must have music in his soul! How--how could it
be otherwise?"

Frieda hurried to the piano and opened it, after giving the stool a
couple of turns. She began with some Mendelssohn. Frances was holding
her baby in her arms, her wonderful head bent towards the little one,
with a curve of her neck so graceful that it fascinated me. Gordon was
also looking at her with a queer, eager look upon his features. He knew
as well as I that she had heard again some vibrant music of former days,
had felt the sound-waves that trembled in her own soul, and that, to
he