We went in the big, brown library, where nothing looked as if it would understand about this, except, mebbe, some of the books--and not all of them--and the fire, that was living on the hearth, understanding all about everything. I sat by the fire and pulled back the little chap's blanket and undid his coat and took his bonnet off; his hair was all mussed up at the back and the cheek he'd slept on was warm-red. Madame Proudfit and the Brother-man stood on the hearth-rug, looking down. Only she was looking from one star to another, and the Brother-man and I, we were on the same star, looking round. We told her what had happened, some of his telling and some of mine. It came over me, while we were doing it, that what had sounded so sensible and sure in the train and in the automobile and in our two hearts sounded different here in the Proudfits' big, brown library, with Madame Proudfit in black lace and jewels I didn't know the name of, listening. But then I looked up in the Brother-man's face and I got _right back_, like he was a kind of perpetual telegraph, the feeling of its being sensible and the _only_ sensible thing to do. Sensible in the sense of your soul being sensible, and not just your being sensible like your neighbors. "But, my dear, dear children," Madame Proudfit says, and stopped. "My _dear_ children," she says on, "what, exactly, are you going to do with him?" "Keep him!" says the Brother-man prompt, and beamed on her as if he had said the one possible answer. "But--keep him!" says Madame Proudfit. "How 'keep him'? Be practical. What are you going to do?" It makes you feel real helpless when folks in black lace tell you to be practical, as if that came before everything else--especially when their "practical" and your "practical" might as well be in two different languages. And yet Madame Proudfit is kind and good too, and she understands that you've got to help or you might as well not be alive; and she gives and gives and gives. But _this_--well, she saw the need and all that, but her way that night would have been to give money and send the little chap away. You know how some are. They can understand everything good and kind--up to a certain point. And that point is, _keep him_. They can't seem to get past that. "_Keep him!_" she says. "Make your bachelor apartment into a nursery? Or you, Calliope, leave him to mind the house while you are canvassing? Be practical. What, _exactly_, are you going to do?" Then the Brother-man frowned a little--I hadn't known he could, but I was glad he knew how. "Really," he said, "I haven't decided yet on the cut of his knickerbockers, or on what college he shall attend, or whether he shall spend his vacations at home or abroad. The details will get themselves done. I only know I mean to _keep him_."