"I want to say," said Samuel—then he stopped. He was an accomplished after-dinner speaker, was Samuel Kingsley, but he had never had a speech to make like this one. He had thought he had it ready on his tongue, but it stuck in his throat. He turned and looked down the table at his boy Syl. Syl nodded at him, comprehending in a boyish way that his father was having some sort of difficulty with his speaking apparatus. Then Samuel looked at Mrs. Samuel, who smiled at him. She was a little pale yet, but her smile was bright as ever. Yet still Samuel could not make his speech. The silence grew tense. Jim Dent, leaning forward and watching his uncle eagerly, felt that it must be relieved. He lifted his glass. "Here’s to Uncle Sam’s speech!" he cried. The tension broke. Everybody laughed—a little agitatedly, and Uncle Sam’s firm lips, under the close-cut, gray moustache, wavered, then set themselves. He looked at his nephew, and something about the sympathetic affection in the bright blue eyes steadied him. "I’m afraid I can’t make it, after all, Jim," said Samuel. "But perhaps I can act it." And he stretched his hand across the table toward his brother Sylvester, who grasped it, as everybody could see, with a grip that stung. Jim Dent’s eyes flew to his Uncle Stephen’s face. He saw it like that of Saint Stephen’s of old, "_as it had been the face of an angel._" To young Sylvester Kingsley, hero of the day, was destined to come still further distinction. It was all of a chance observation of his, made just before his removal to bed—at the same hour as his baby sister, much to his disgust. But, resigning himself to his fate, as Cousin Jim stooped to bear him away he gave one last look about the pleasant, holly-hung room. Although their elders had kept as many of the family differences from their children’s ears as was possible, they had not been able to forestall the use of the children’s sharp eyes, and the sight Syl now saw struck him as unusual. It was nothing more than the gathering of five brothers, of varying ages, about the chair of one of their number, in front of the great fireplace where roared and crackled a mighty fire of logs. But the expressions of geniality and cordial interest upon the five faces indicated such good fellowship that the young son of Samuel Kingsley was moved to say to his cousin Jim: "What a lot of brothers there are in this house! Dad’s got four, and I’ve three and Harold’s two, and they’re all in this room. This ought to be called ’Brotherly House.’" "So it ought," agreed Jim Dent, smiling at the thought. "It would be a fine name, and true, too." He carried the boy away, and stopped to tell him a story after he was in bed—a football story, such as only Cousin Jim could tell, because he knew all about it from the inside. But when Jim came back to the fireside he told them of young Syl’s idea. "And a jolly idea I call it, don’t you?" he added.