She subdued, judiciously, the joy which had been in her voice. "I am glad to see the old place again--yes," she said. "Won't it be delightful for us to be together there, where we first knew each other?" "It is the child you want--not me," he said, with grudging reproach. She found it necessary to make some quite exaggerated statements to reassure him. Her mother was in the carriage which met them at the station. "Milly is staying up, till you come," she told them. "I left her capering wildly about the nursery with delight." "I hope she won't over-excite herself," the mother said, and the grandmother laughed at that anxiety. No child of hers had ever had a weakness of the heart, and she was inclined to ridicule the idea that Milly required more care than had been given to her own children. Full of longing to see her child, Mrs Walsh sprang from the carriage, and ran up the broad steps to the wide-open doors of her home. Then, with a happy after-thought, turned on the mat, and held out her hands to the new husband. "Welcome--welcome to our home, dear," she said. He grasped the hands tightly. "After all, I suppose I am a little more to you than the child?" he asked. She smiled a flattering affirmative; and at the instant there came a scream in a child's voice from a room above, followed by an ominous silence. When the others reached the nursery from which as they knew, the sound had come, the mother was already standing there, holding in her arms the unconscious form of her little girl. From a tiny wound in the child's white forehead drops of blood were oozing. "I left her for one minute to fetch the water for her bath," the nurse was saying, hurriedly excusing herself. "She was running up and down and round about, calling, 'Daddy, come to Milly! Come, daddy, come!'" "She fell and struck her head against the sharp corner of this stool," Major Walsh said. "Look, it has sharp corners." The child was only unconscious for a minute. She opened her eyes, smiled upon her mother, hid her face in her neck, and presently was whispering a question again and again in her ear. Mrs Walsh looked up in a bewildered fashion from the little hidden face. "What does she say?" the grandmother asked. "She says, 'Where is my daddy gone?'" the mother repeated, faltering a little over the words, and with scared eyes. "He is here," said the practical grandmother, and took Major Walsh by the arm. "We have told her her daddy was coming with her mother," she explained. "She was more excited about him even than about you, Millicent. Look up! Here is your daddy, darling." Slowly the child lifted her head from the mother's shoulder, and looked at the big man with the hard face now stooping over her--looked for half a second, shut her eyes again, and again hid her face. "It isn't my daddy," she said, with a baby whimper, "Milly wants _my_ daddy that came and danced with Milly. Where's my daddy gone?"