"Will you go to sleep right away if I do, Sid?" he asked.
The child shut his eyes very tight.
"Like that," he promised.
It was not the Sidney Dallam of the counting-room who told that story, and Honora listened with strange sensations which she did not attempt to define.
"I used to be fond of that one when I was a youngster," he explained apologetically to her as they went out, and little Sid had settled himself obediently on the pillow once more. "It was when I dreamed," he added, "of less prosaic occupations than the stock market."
Sidney Dallam had dreamed!
Although Lily Dallam had declared that to leave her house before midnight was to insult her, it was half-past eleven when Honora and her husband reached home. He halted smilingly in her doorway as she took off her wrap and laid it over a chair.
"Well, Honora," he asked, "how do you like—the whirl of fashion?"
She turned to him with one of those rapid and bewildering movements that sometimes characterized her, and put her arms on his shoulders.
"What a dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard," she said. "I wonder what would have happened to you if I hadn't rescued you in the nick of time! Own up that you like—a little variety in life."