ence, ceased.

The Boy sat very still, his head bent forward, his brown hands clasping
his knees. Then suddenly he knelt up beside her, leaned over the arm
of her chair, and looked into her eyes. There was in his face such a
tender reverence of adoration, that the Aunt knew she need not be
afraid to have him so near. This was holy ground. She put from off
her feet the shoes of doubt and distrust; waiting, in perfect calmness,
to hear what he had to say.

"Dear," murmured the Boy, tenderly, "your little stories might possibly
have had the effect you intended--specially the place where you paused
and gazed at me as if you saw me still with sand upon my nose, and ten
pink toes like sea-shells! That was calculated to make any chap feel
youngish, and a bit shy. Wasn't it? Yes; they might have told the way
you meant, were it not for one dear sentence which overshadows all the
rest. You said just now: 'I knew my little Boy Blue had no mother. I
wanted to take him in my arms, smooth his curls, and comfort him.'
Christobel, that dear wish of yours was a gift you then gave to your
Little Boy Blue. You can't take it away now, because he has grown
bigger. He still has no mother, no sisters, no near relations in the
world. That all holds good. Can you refuse him the haven, the help,
the comfort you would have given him then, now--when at last he is old
enough to know and understand; to turn to them, in grateful worship and
wonder? Would you have me marry a girl as feather-brained, as
harum-scarum, as silly as I often am myself? You suggest Mollie; but
the Boy Blue of to-day agrees with his small wise self of twenty years
ago and says: 'Fanks, but I don't like girls!' Oh, Christobel, I want
a woman's love, a woman's arms, a woman's understanding tenderness!
You said, just now, you wished you had been my mother. Does not the
love of the sort of wife a fellow really wants, have a lot of the
mother in it too? I've been filled with such a glory, Christobel,
since you admitted what you felt for your Little Boy Blue because I
seemed to know, somehow, that having once felt it, though the feeling
may have gone to sleep, you could never put it quite away. But, if
your Little Boy Blue came back, from the other end of the world, and
wanted you----"

The Boy stopped suddenly, struck dumb by the look on the beautiful face
beneath his. He saw it pale to absolute whiteness, while the dear firm
lips faltered and trembled. He