"Could you detect any change in Mr. Bruce after the boy came into his office?" asked Mrs. Winslow.
"Only that he was kinder and friendlier than ever."
"That probably means that the boy told him and that Mr. Bruce understood and was sorry."
"No doubt," he said. "You'd talk to the boy then? Now what would you do about Nellie?"
"What was it Miss Winton thought you should do?"
"See Nellie! Take her back!" he exclaimed. "Give her further opportunity to exercise her brand of wifehood on me and motherhood on the boys!"
"James, if you do, I'll never forgive you!" cried his sister. "If you tear up this comfortable, healthful place, where you are the honoured head of your house, and put your boys back where you found them, I'll go home and stay there; and you can't blame me."
"Miss Winton didn't ask me to go back," he explained; "that couldn't be done. I saw and examined the deed of gift of the premises to the city. The only thing she could do would be to buy it back, and it's torn up inside, and will be in shape for opening any day now, I hear. The city needed a Children's Hospital; to get a place like that free, in so beautiful and convenient a location—and her old friends are furious at her for bringing sickness and crooked bodies among them. No doubt they would welcome her there, but they wouldn't welcome her anywhere else. She must have endowed it liberally, no hospital in the city has a staff of the strength announced for it."
"James, you are wandering!" she interrupted. "You started to tell me what Miss Winton asked of you."
"That I bring Nellie here," he explained. "That I make her mistress of this house. That I put myself and the boys in her hands again."