"No, I’m not out of chocolates." James Dent, Junior put his hand into his blue-serge pocket and produced a small box. "But you’re too old for ’em," he explained, and put the box back. He hurried her past the threshold of Mr. Stephen Kingsley’s room. Across the baby’s golden head Uncle Stephen looked tensely up at them. It needed but one look. Then his nephew sprang forward and took Anne’s baby sister from a grasp which had grown suddenly nerveless, and his niece, stooping over her uncle’s chair, gently patted a white cheek down which the first tear of relief was slowly trickling. It seems to "work that way" with the whole human race. Except, perhaps, with mothers. Upstairs, Mrs. Sam sat beside her boy’s bed, and his keen young eyes saw no tears upon her lovely, radiant face. If she cried at all it was only in her heart—her happy heart—which ached yet with the agony of what might have been—on Christmas Day. It was a good thing that the dining-room in the old house was a big one. Mr. Kingsley had specially decreed that everybody—everybody—should be seated at one great table. There was to be no compromise effected by having the children wait for the "second table"—has any one who has ever waited for that "second table" at a family gathering forgotten what an ordeal it is, or how interminably long the old folks are about it? There were twenty-nine of them, including the three babies, but by some marvel of arrangement Mrs. Griggs had managed to make a place for every one. "But you’ll have to say how we’re to seat them," said Mrs. Griggs, anxiously invading Mr. Stephen Kingsley’s room. "With all our planning we’ve forgot that part. You’d better make me out a list, so I can lay those holly cards you’ve written the names on." "Bless my soul," murmured Mr. Kingsley, "must they be specially arranged? Of course they must. I had forgotten. Clara"—he turned to his sister who came in at the moment—"help me with this, will you?" "Give me the cards, Mrs. Griggs," requested Mrs. Clara capably. She swept a clear space on the table at her brother’s elbow as she spoke. "What’s all this?" asked Jim Dent at the door five minutes later. "Card games?" "Do come and help me, Jim," cried his aunt. "I thought this would be easy, but it’s not. I can’t keep George’s and William’s families apart," she explained in a lower tone. "There are so many of them." "Don’t try." "Oh, but I must. They—you know that old——" "It seems to be a thing of the past. I met Uncle George’s boy Harold and Uncle William coming downstairs hand in hand just now. They’d been up to see Syl together." "Jim!" His uncle’s face lighted as if the sunlight had struck it. "But the fathers?" Jim put his head out of the door and took a survey of the room beyond. "Sitting on opposite sides of the fireplace," he announced. "That’s pretty near," admitted Mr. Kingsley. "That’s certainly pretty near. With a fire between them. I wonder what——"