The girls filed slowly out. As they passed the table, where Jap was piling the papers to fold, Isabel Granger, doubtless inspired by the demon of mischief, leaned forward suddenly and kissed him full on the mouth. Then she fled, shrieking with glee. Jap stood as if stricken to stone. Bill looked at him in fright. There was no color in his freckled face. His gray eyes were staring, as if some wonderful vision had blasted his sight. "Gee, Jap," said Bill uneasily, "are you sick?" Jap aroused himself and turned toward the press. "No," he said slowly, "but I don't like for folks to be familiar like that. If I wanted to be a fool like you----" He stopped and stared a moment from the window. "The next time she kisses me," he said shortly, "she will mean it." CHAPTER VII What a wonderful thing is a baby! Babies were not new to either Bill or Jap. In Bill's memory lingered the shrill duet of his twin half-sisters, a continuous performance that had lasted more than a year. And Jap had never fully corrected a lurch to the left side, due to carrying his sister, Agnesia, when he was little more than a baby himself. Yet the little visitor from the Land of Yesterday was a never failing miracle to them. His cry filled them with fear for his well-being, and his laugh intoxicated them with its glee. "Wait till he can talk," smiled Flossy, "Then you will see how wise he is." In her heart she was beginning to combat the fear that he would never talk. Other children of his age were already chattering like magpies. "Ma said that I said 'papa' when I was eight months old," declared Jap. "But I don't know why I should 'a' said that." Bill grinned fatuously as the baby pulled at his hair. "Bill won't get his hair cut," said Jap. "He knows that J. W. would hang after me, if it wasn't for his curly hair." The little fellow, who for obvious reasons could be neither Jasper nor William, had learned to respond with amiable toleration to the soothing abbreviation, "J. W." Kicking his stubby legs gleefully, he tangled his fingers more mercilessly in Bill's brown locks. Flossy loosed the fingers gently, as she cooed: "Naughty, naughty! Mamma said baby mustn't." Flinging his fingers aloft in protest, he gurgled: "Ja--Bi!" Flossy's eyes shone with sudden joy. It was her son's first attempt at articulate speech. The boys lunged forward with one impulse. "He said 'Jappie,'" Jap cried, his chest swelling with the importance of it. Bill glared. "Why, Jap!" Pain and indignation were in his tone. "He tried to say 'Bill.'" Flossy smiled on them both. It was a wonderful little kingdom, of which she had assumed the place of absolute monarch, a monarch so gentle and so just that her sway was never questioned.