"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it--it talks wiv its lights. I saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would come,' he says, patient. "Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand, and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face bright with whatever she was thinking about. "'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow--a dear little fellow. And all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?' "Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a minute. 'How ours?' he asks. 'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.' "'No, no,' she says. '_Ours._ To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let him be really ours.' "He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative. "'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle that way with somebody's life.' "She looked at him, not understanding. "'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely into the office of destiny--keeping, bringing-up, making, as you say--meddling with, I call it--anybody's life.' "'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled. "'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?' "I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain. "'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible, as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort. She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what you are saving?' "'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?' "'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends. "She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment. "'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.' "But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love with her--unless he is the special kind--he begins thinking how much sweeter and softer and _womaner_ she is when she's just plain gentle. And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he remembers her being--that is, unless he's special, unless he's special. Like Alex got uneasy now.