"Mayn't I have my dinner with the rest of 'em?" begged Syl.
Dinner! The Christmas dinner! They had all forgotten it except the hero of the day. "Because I'm awfully hungry," urged Syl.
In the deserted hall downstairs Jim Dent happily encountered Anne. He seized her hand.
"Come with me to tell Uncle Stephen!" he commanded. "But—stop crying first! Uncle Steve's a pretty wise man, but he can't be expected to tell the difference between tears of sorrow and tears of crazy joy—not at first sight."
"I don't know why I'm crying," sobbed Anne, breaking down completely and burying her face on the blue-serge shoulder which conveniently offered itself at the moment, just as she had done many times since she was a baby. Even when she was eight and Cousin Jim was fifteen, that shoulder of his had been one to hide one's unhappy eyes upon. "I didn't cry a drop—till I knew Syl was s-safe!"
"I know. Queer, isn't it? It always works that way. I confess I had some difficulty in seeing the way across the room myself, a few minutes ago. But wipe 'em away and come on! Uncle Stephen mustn't have to wait for his news. Look up here. Smile! Here—maybe this will help——" and for the third time within twenty-four hours he stooped and kissed her.
The tremulous lips broke suddenly into the smile he sued for. Through the tears shone a sudden mischievous light. "Cousin Jim," she observed, "you seem to have changed your methods a good deal. Always before it was chocolates. Are you out of chocolates?"
"No, I'm not out of chocolates." James Dent, Junior put his hand into his blue-serge pocket and produced a small box. "But you're too old for 'em," he explained, and put the box back.
He hurried her past the threshold of Mr. Stephen Kingsley's room. Across the baby's golden head Uncle Stephen looked tensely up at them. It needed but one look. Then his nephew sprang forward and took Anne's baby sister from a grasp which had grown suddenly nerveless, and his niece, stooping over her uncle's chair, gently patted a white cheek down which the first tear of relief was slowly trickling.
It seems to "work that way" with the whole human race. Except, perhaps, with mothers. Upstairs, Mrs. Sam sat beside her boy's bed, and his keen young eyes saw no tears upon her lovely, radiant face. If she cried at all it was only in her heart—her happy heart—which ached yet with the agony of what might have been—on Christmas Day.