"Tom, Tom, you mustn't grab baby like that with a pin in your coat. Why, I wouldn't keep pins in my clothes any more than I would a hoppy-toad. Sure to scratch baby. Well, dear boy, if you don't like my ways, don't swing on my gate. When you strain my hinges, they creak."
"No lack of spirit, at any rate," laughed the Bishop. "Cheer up, Tom. I am more anxious now for your boy than for your girl. I think she'll do."
At that moment, in the garret nursery, temporarily fitted up for the children's use, Tom's boy was talking with Joan in a way momentous to both. He was a handsome, finely built young fellow, with the look of half-sulky defiance which marks the boy who, for one reason or another, has yet to earn his real manhood.
"So that's the plan for you and the kids, eh? I'm glad for you, Joan, if you like it. I wish I knew what college father will decide to send me to. I can't understand why he won't let me choose. And he was so odd at Aunt Milly's; he swept me away before I had really finished my breakfast, and sat watching me eat with his face like a thunder-cloud."
Joan's heart contracted with a quick fear of unhappy possibilities which had not before occurred to her. What had seemed ideal to her was not, she began to realize, Tom's ideal. She controlled herself to reply.
"What were you eating?" she asked, practically.
"Quail on toast; and there was no harm in that. You would have thought he had caught me picking a pocket. He was closeted for a long time with Aunt Milly, and she came out crying, and told me father meant to take me from her at once. Did you know Aunt Milly wanted to adopt me?"
Joan raised her eyes with the rare searching look her uncle had admired. "You would not like that?" she stated rather than asked.
Tom shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. It would mean money to burn."
"It would mean hearts to burn," replied Joan, quickly. "Tom, would you like it?" She looked in his face with pleading anxiety.