Even in his tiny babyhood he was companionable to his mother, Rachael even consenting to the plan of taking him to Home Dunes in June, although by this arrangement she saw Warren only at week-end intervals until the doctor's vacation came in August. When he came down, and the big car honked at the gate, she invariably had the baby in her arms when she came to meet him. "Hello, Daddy. Here we are! How are you, dearest?" Rachael would say, adding, before he could answer her: "We want you to notice our chic Italian socks, Doctor Gregory; how's that for five months? Take him, Greg! Go to Daddy, Little Mister!" "All very well, but how's my wife?" Warren Gregory might ask, kissing her over the baby's bobbing head. "Lovely! Do you know that your son weighs fifteen pounds--isn't that amazing?" Rachael would hang on his free arm, in happy wifely fashion, as they went back to the house. "Want to go with me to London?" he asked her one day in the late fall when they were back in town. "Why not Mars?" she asked placidly, putting a fresh, stiff dress over Jimmy's head. "No, but I'm serious, my dear girl," Warren Gregory said surprised. "But--I don't understand you. What about Jim?" "Why, leave him here with Mary. We won't be gone four weeks." Rachael smiled, but it was an uneasy, almost an affronted, smile. "Oh, Warren, we couldn't! I couldn't! I would simply worry myself sick!" "I don't see why. The child would be perfectly safe. George is right here if anything happened!" "George--but George isn't his mother!" Rachael fell silent, biting her lip, a little shadow between her brows. "What is it--the convention?" she presently asked. "Do you HAVE to go?" "It isn't absolutely necessary," Warren said dryly. But this was enough for Rachael, who opened the subject that evening when George and Alice Valentine were there. "George, DOES Warren have to go to this London convention, or whatever it is?" "Not necessarily," smiled Doctor Valentine. "Why, doesn't he want to go?" "I don't want him to go!" Rachael asserted. "It would be a senseless risk to take that baby across the ocean," Alice contributed, and no more was said of the possibility then or at any other time, to Rachael's great content. But when the winter season was well begun, and Jimmy delicious in his diminutive furs, Doctor Gregory and his wife had a serious talk, late on a snowy afternoon, and Rachael realized then that her husband had been carrying a slight sense of grievance over this matter for many weeks. He had come in at six o'clock, and was changing his clothes for dinner, half an hour later, when Rachael came into his dressing-room. Her hair had been dressed, and under her white silk wrapper her gold slippers and stockings were visible, but she seemed disinclined to finish her toilette. "Awful bore!" she said, smiling, as she sat down to watch him. "What--the Hoyts? Oh, I don't think so!" he answered in surprise.