The others echoed the wish, and Brown, yielding against his will--somehow he had never wanted more to remain in the shadow--took a chair at one end of the hearth, where he was in full view of them all. "It was given me," said Brown, speaking in a tone which instantly arrested even Hugh Breckenridge's careless attention, though why it did so he could not have said, "by a man whose son was wearing it when he stood on a plank between two windows, ten stories up in the air, and passed fifteen girls over it to safety. Then--the plank burned through at one end. He had known it would." There fell a hush upon the little group. Mrs. Brainard put out her hand and touched Brown's shoulder caressingly. "No wonder you wouldn't exchange it, Don," she said, very gently. "Was the father at your dinner, Don?" Doctor Brainard asked, after a minute. "Yes, Doctor." "So you wore it to please him," commented Sue. "He wore it," said Helena Forrest, "as a man might wear the Victoria Cross." "Ah, but I didn't earn it," denied Brown, without looking up. "I'm not so sure of that," Mrs. Brainard declared. "You must have done something to make the father feel you worthy to wear a thing he valued so much." "He fancied," said Brown--"he and the mother--that there was a slight resemblance between my looks and those of the son. And they have a finer memorial of him than anything he wore; they have one end of the burned plank. The father has cut the date on it, with his son's name, and it hangs over the chimney-piece." "What a tragic thing!" cried Sue, shuddering. "I don't see how they can keep it. Do tell us something else, Don. Doesn't anything amusing ever happen here? Oh--what became of the baby?" Brown rose suddenly to his feet. "I'm forgetting my hospitality," said he. "I'm going to make you all some coffee. The baby, Sue, is at Mrs. Kelcey's, next door. Having only six of her own, she could easily make room for the seventh." "Tell us about the baby," demanded Webb Atchison. "Has Don gone into the nursery business, with all the rest?" Sue began to tell the story, describing the night on which she made her first visit to her brother. Brown disappeared into the kitchen and soon returned, bringing with him, as was his entertaining custom, the materials for brewing his coffee upon the hob. "You remember," he said, as he came, "the way this room was cleared for your reception?" "By an avalanche of boys, who swept everything, hurly-burly, into outer darkness," supplied Breckenridge. "You can guess, perhaps, what the kitchen must be looking like, can't you?" "Indescribable," murmured Sue. "You're not going to invite us to put it in order for you, are you, Don?--and wash all those dreadful, gaudy plates and cups?" "Just take a look out there, will you?"