“Oh, I’m sorry. But he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let go.” There was the daintiest little chuckle of pride in her voice and Justin felt his sense of injury melting. His eyes, accustomed to the half darkness, had found her at last, a splash of black draperies on the whiteness of the coverlet. Timothy, nominally a-bed, had forsaken his pillow for her shoulder and there lay snug, all pink curves and inadequate nightgown—one small fist tugging at her hair. A woolly beast was on her lap, and a tipped plate that had held strawberries, for the green calyxes were sliding off its rim. Her watch was on the floor, and he thought, by the ticking of it, that the lid was open. Her bracelets were on Timothy’s arm. He chuckled. “You’ve been having a high old time!” “I?” she countered blankly. “Don’t creak so, Justin. What are you looking for?” “The slipper. Didn’t you smack him?” “You don’t understand children,” said Laura coldly. “He was perfectly good. He only wanted managing.” He surveyed the evidences of management with a twinkle, but he spoke sympathetically— “I say, old girl, you’ll get a stiff neck. Keep still. No, I won’t wake him.” With immense caution his big hands closed over the clutching, tiny fingers, straightened them, and unwound the tangle of bright hair. Then, slipping his arm under Timothy, he lifted him, warm and relaxed as a kitten, back into the identical hollow in which he had lain before. For an egg warm from the nest he could not have been more careful. Timothy never stirred. Laura, smoothing back her hair, watched him in silence, thinking thoughts of her own. Then, as he turned, she held out her hands, smiling. “Help me up—I didn’t know I was so stiff. He won’t wake now, will he? He was dead tired, poor little chap! I’m so sorry I forgot about the bridge—but you see—it’s so bad to let them cry.” “Of course,” he agreed indignantly. He too had had Timothy in his arms. “What was the matter?” “Just frightened. That pig of a nurse had never put him a night-light. I shall tell Mrs. Cloud. It’s a sin not to give a child a night-light, with bears under every chair.” “Bears! A bear would have been a comforting beast! I read _Dracula_ when I was seven.” “It was hands with me,” Laura was fumbling in the wash-stand drawer. “There was a curio, a mummy’s hand, locked up in the top drawer of the wardrobe, at least somebody said so. It used to squeeze itself out and come crawling down, dropping from one drawer knob to the next, like a spider. My bed was next to the wardrobe. I used to roll myself up in the bedclothes till I nearly choked, but even then I could feel it through the blankets pawing at my face.” “Oh, beastly!” “If they’d only have let me have my kitten—but Auntie always took it away last thing. Here are the night-lights.” “But if you’d told——”