Nanny was cross. She had lost her bubbling merriment and her family wondered.
"Sis, I believe you will be an old maid, all right. I'm beginning to see the signs already," her brother lazily told her one day when to some innocent remark of his she made a snapping answer.
Mr. Ainslee laughed.
"You aren't reading the signs correctly, Son," he said. "Nan's crossness can be interpreted another way. It's my private opinion that Nanny's in love."
Whereupon Mr. Ainslee dodged for he fully expected that Nanny would hurl a pillow his way. But Nanny didn't. She turned a little white, caught her breath a little hurriedly and then stood looking quietly at the two men. When she left the room her father was a little worried and her brother a little uncomfortable.
"I guess we'd better let up on the teasing, Dad," the boy suggested in the serious, soft voice that had been his mother's, the mother who had never teased.
"I wouldn't hurt Nanny for the world," penitently murmured Mr. Ainslee. "I had no idea—oh, Son," he suddenly groaned, "I wish your mother was here to look after us all."
And the great diplomat who was known and welcomed at the courts of great nations was suddenly only a plain man, crying out his heart's need of the loved woman he had lost so many years ago.
And because the boy was the son of the woman for whom his father grieved he knew how to sympathize and comfort the man.
"I've missed her too—lots of times—even though, Dad, you've been the most wonderful father two kids ever had."