Mag's baby is with them, already learning, a docile, womanly little creature of six years, to pick up the stitches dropped by busy, careless, eager Jacqueline. It is a household Jacques Benoix loves to hear about, and Kate to visit. But she never stays long. Cities bewilder her with their crowded indifference--men hurrying hither and thither like ants in an ant-hill, heedless of the wide sky above, heedless of each other, heedless of everything except each the small burden he carries on his back. Always she turns home to Jacques and the mountains with a sigh of relief. Often, for she is not the woman to neglect a duty because it is painful, Kate goes down to Storm, a home now for crippled children, both white and black. It seems to her that the old house has grown less grim and forbidding under the influence of the little people who are happy there because of Basil Kildare's memory of his crippled daughter;--and also, perhaps, of another crippled child, his son. * * * * * Often, too, she makes one of her flying visits to James and Jemima Thorpe. Once, some years since, she was called in haste to nurse Jemima through what her husband's telegram indicated as a "slight indisposition"; and upon hurrying to the sickroom was astounded to find Mrs. Thorpe propped up in bed, ministering very deftly to the needs of an infant son, so like his father that it was rather a shock to see him without eye-glasses. It took Kate several days to recover her breath. At last, happening one day to discover Jemima gazing down at her gourmand child with something more than tolerance in her expression, Kate blurted out: "But I thought you did not believe in babies, Blossom!" "Believe in them? Why, of course, Mother! Babies are quite indispensable to the scheme of things--but not to me." "Then--why--?" "Oh," said Jemima, practically, "it seemed rather a pity that there should be no one to inherit Aunt Jemima's money. And then--well, intelligences such as James' and mine really ought to be perpetuated, I suppose. As you once said--my baby isn't all Kildare!" She gave her husband a quick, shy smile that was rather demonstrative for Jemima. He leaned over and took her hand. "Why not tell your mother the truth, my dear?" She flushed. "That is the truth, of course! Or--well, not perhaps _all_ the truth.... You see, Mother, you were so upset about poor Jacky's baby.... Of course it's not quite the same, she is more like you than I am. But still ... And what you said about the 'spark.' ... So, you see--" In her dread of sentiment, she was bungling the explanation so badly that James Thorpe took it out of her hands. "Kate, you may regard the young person in question" (he grinned down at it fatuously) "as _our_ child in only the technical sense of the word. It is, in fact, Jemima's gift to you. She came to the conclusion that she could offer you nothing you would prefer to a grandson."