"O Mrs. Estel! Don't you suppose they have found little Dorothy in that other country by this time, and are taking care of her there, just like you are taking care of us here?"
She put her arm around him, and drew him nearer, saying: "My dear little comfort, it may be so. If I could believe that, I could never feel so unhappy again."
Robin and "ze black dancin' bear" were not the only ones tucked tenderly away to sleep that night.
The sleigh bells jingled along the avenue. Again the great church organ rolled out a mighty flood of melody, that ebbed and flowed on the frosty night air.
And Big Brother, with his head pillowed once more beside Robin's, lay with his eyes wide open, too happy to sleep—lay and dreamed of the time when he should be a man, and could gather into the great house he meant to own all the little homeless ones in the wide world; all the sorry little waifs that strayed through the streets of great cities, that crowded in miserable tenements, that lodged in asylums and poorhouses.
Into his child's heart he gathered them all, with a sweet unselfishness that would have gladly shared with every one of them his new-found home and happiness.