“You are as fond of children as ever,” the General remarked, “and it proves that your heart is in the right spot. Show me a man who has no use for little tots, and I'll show you a man who will cheat you in a transaction.”
“It certainly is a good quality,” Margaret said, as she proffered sugar for his tea. “We naturally expect it of women, but it always seems exceptional in men, especially men who have their time fully occupied.”
Sylvester laughed reminiscently.
“I've seen Kenneth stop on the street to chat with a dirty-faced newsboy when the general superintendent of his road was waving an important telegram at him; and I've seen the boy walk off with a quarter for a penny paper, too.”
“I seem to be getting my share of compliments, at any rate,” Galt laughed. “I'd call it flattery if I could accuse your hospitality of anything not wholly genuine.”
“Uncle Tom certainly means what he says,” Margaret affirmed. Her glance drifted in the direction the sporting child had taken, and she uttered a sharp, startled scream.
“Oh, he'll fall!” she cried.
Following her eyes, the others saw that Lionel, still chasing the kitten, had climbed the tree to its lower boughs ten or twelve feet from the ground, and, with the prize still above him, sat in a decidedly perilous position on a bending branch so intent on reaching the animal that he was oblivious of his danger.
“Don't be frightened, I'll get him down,” Galt assured her, with an easy laugh, and he sprang up and ran across the grass, saying, under his breath: “Plucky little scamp! He'll break his neck!”
“Come down from there!” he called out, a queer recurrence of his own childhood on him as he viewed the muscular boy and the plump, bare calves above his short stockings. He was breathing freely now, for he felt that in case of a fall he could catch the youngster in his arms.