Tom Dowling was a model of fraternal devotion after Cis was installed under Nan’s roof; he made opportunities to visit his sister to an incredible degree. “Good old Tommy is a dear boy, but I wonder if he really thinks I don’t see through him!” Nan cried. “Paraffine paper is thick beside his transparency; you’d be more than blind to miss seeing through him,” Joe answered. Tom brought extraordinary things to the baby, toys which would require two more years of life for him to handle--a whipping top is not adapted to a boy two months old, nor is a tin locomotive run by sand that flows upon its wheels from a revolving sieve, hidden in its smokestack. “Oh, Tommy, why, _why_!” Nan sighed one day when Tom produced a large cow, with a realistic moo when its head was moved, from a large package beneath his arm. “He’ll grow to it; something to cut his ambition on, same’s you give him that bone thing to chew on for his teeth,” explained Tom, unabashed. “Tom’s really a dear, Cis,” Nan said that night after Tom had gone home. “Mother is perfectly delighted that he has stuck to you so; she used to hope he’d see Louise Müller, a neighbor’s daughter, but he never did. Now mother is worrying for fear you won’t care about him. Do you think that you ever could, Cis darling? Of course all these cows, and tops and engines are not for baby; they’re for you, same as the candy is.” “I don’t seem to enjoy the cow any more than Matt does; must I play with it, Nan? Tom didn’t offer it to me,” Cis sighed. “Not directly. I mean they’re all intended to make you notice him. I’d almost die of joy, Cis, if you were my sister!” cried Nan. “Adopt me, Nannie. We can make it as effectual, and I’m afraid it’s the only way,” Cis suggested. “Don’t look cast-down; Tom will be all right, and it’s better to have him imagine he cares about me than to be growing up without an object. He’ll find the right girl later, and in the mean time it keeps him safe for her.” “Growing up! He’s as old as you are, or so nearly it comes to the same thing!” cried Nan. “You don’t take Tom seriously, but he takes himself--and you--seriously enough.” “Boys do,” said Cis. “Don’t fuss, little grandmother; it’s enough to be a mother and bring up Matt. He’s learning to love me, too, by the way!” As the days passed, however, Cis began to take Tom more seriously; he began to be a burden on her mind. He dogged her footsteps; wherever she went Tom turned up. He watched for chances to do her small services, carried out her least suggestions, modelled himself upon the advice which she had given him when she had first come back, before she realized that she must not let him conform himself to her ideas, before she began to look upon him as anything more than Tommy Dowling, Nan’s honest and likable boy-brother.