"Would you like him beside you a
moment?"
"Please."
He felt the faint scent of the tiny boy, and still those eyes looked into
his. He forgot his daughter standing there; and as he watched, a sweet
fresh sense of the mystery of this life so new stole deep into his spirit.
All at once the baby fell asleep.
"Good-night, little brother," he whispered. "God grant the world be very
kind." He could feel the mother lift it up, and he heard the door close
softly.
Smiling he, too, fell asleep. And after that there were only dreams.
CHAPTER XLIV
And his dreams were of children. Their faces passed before him. Now they
were young again in the house. They were eating their suppers, three small
girls, chattering like magpies. From her end of the table their mother
smiled quietly across at him. "Come children," she was saying, "that will
do for a little while." But Roger said, "Oh, let them talk."... Then he saw
new-comers. Bruce came in with Edith, and George and young Elizabeth, and
Allan came with Deborah who had a baby in her arms, and Laura stood beside
them. Here were his three daughters, grown, but still in some uncanny way
they looked to him like children still; and behind them he detected figures
long forgotten, of boys and girls whom he had known far back in his own
childhood. John, too, had come into the house. Strangely now the walls were
gone, had lifted, and a clamorous throng, laughing, shouting, pummeling,
hedged him in on every hand--Deborah's big family!
Soon the uproar wearied him, and Roger tried to shut them out, to bring
back again the walls to his house.
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