"Good friends!" Mrs. Aymer sprang up again and moved restlessly to the fire.
"Hold on!" her husband grasped her skirt and drew her resolutely back. "My child, if you put the Cape Cod fire-lighter hot into the kerosene, there will be an explosion, and we shall all be burned very painfully. This is the fourth time I have caught you on the point of doing it; the next time, I shall take the thing away and give it to your cousin Selina, who has never moved quickly in her life. Now, my dear girl, sit down, and stay down for ten minutes."
Mrs. Aymer subsided in temporary eclipse of meekness, and John Aymer turned to his brother-in-law, who also had sprung forward when he saw the glowing sponge approaching the brass pot.
"All right, Lar! She will do it, but I am generally on the lookout. You ask if Mary and Pippin have been good friends. Lawrence, I have been conscious for the last two weeks that while Lucy's body has had many occupations, her mind has done little except marry these two young people, establish them in a shed-apartment-elect (to be furnished, I gather, with all our belongings except those actually in use), and assist in bringing up their family. I feel quite the godfather already, I assure you!"
"Dear me, sirs!" the chaplain blew smoke rings and watched them with a critical eye. "I had no idea it had gone as far as that!"
"It hasn't, except in Lucy's fertile brain. Possibly neither of them has thought of it, though I admit the possibility to be highly improbable, at least on the boy's side. If I were in his place—"
Here Mrs. Aymer was discovered to be weeping quietly and drying her eyes with her knitting, to their imminent peril. Both men sprang to caress and comfort her. Her husband vowed that he would, if necessary, hale both the potentially contracting parties to the altar and make Larry marry them then and there. Anything, he declared, rather than have his wife blinded by knitting needles or destroyed by fire. Incidentally, he himself was a brute, and if his little girl cried any more, he would touch himself off with the Cape Cod fire-lighter and have done with it. Her brother said nothing, but took hold of her little finger and shook it in a particular way which had meant consolation ever since he was six and big, and Lucy was three and little. Finally, between them, they coaxed a smile from her, and a declaration that they were dear boys and she was a goose. Then it occurred to her that Mary might sleep better with a hot water bottle; this cleared up matters wonderfully, and she bustled off quite cheerfully, promising John that she would have one herself, and giving Larry a good-night hug as the best of brothers.
The brothers-in-law exchanged an affectionate nod as the door closed behind the little woman they both adored; a nod which said many things, all kind and patient and loving. They smoked in silence for ten minutes, then one asked the other where he got his boots; the other replied, and they talked boots with absent-minded ardor for ten minutes more, then fell silent again.
"But," John Aymer exploded suddenly, "it is, as I said, an extremely rum start. I suppose you feel perfectly sure of your pet lamb, Lar?"