"And mine," said Kate tragically.
"Mine is of no particular consequence," drawled Jermyn, with a reproachful look at Kate, "still, it got a frightful stab."
"You poor fallow!" exclaimed Kate, making amends in the most delightful manner appropriate to the occasion. This demonstration incited Harry and Fenie to be very tender to each other, and there was an instant of delicious silence, too soon broken by a pitiful wail which seemed to come from a portière.
"I s'pose it don't matter about my poor little bit of a heart, but it was broke most to pieces."
"Did that child overhear the quarrel?" whispered Fenie.
"'Twas she who brought us word about it," Kate replied.
Then Harry and Fenie kissed Trixy, and Jermyn took her into his arms, and the child, relieved of her load of responsibility, fell asleep, and Jermyn held her so tenderly and looked at her so fondly and thoughtfully that Kate looked upon him with a new and tender expression in her eyes, although she wouldn't for the world have had him see it. Finally Kate herself took the child, so softly that she did not waken it, and carried it to and fro a moment or two, and finally laid it upon a sofa, and Jermyn looked at Kate every moment, and thought, and thought, and thought. At last he ventured to remark:
"All the artists and poets have been wrong. They should have made Cupid a little girl."
The four sat and talked until Trif and Phil returned, and then they continued to talk, yet the astute heads of the family did not hear or see anything that could make them imagine that there had been any trouble. Indeed, Trif told her husband that it seemed strange that Jermyn and Kate should have spared time for a call on that particular evening, when Jermyn's time was so short, and he must soon be away for no one knew how long.