With a desire to escape observation, she made an excuse of putting the baby away and went to the bedroom with the child. Slipping him into his little nightdress she made him comfortable for the night, after which she went back to the dining room to keep Jake from thinking she had anything to cry about. There was an added hum of voices, and she went in with some curiosity. Silas Chamberlain stood beside the stove with his old cap and his home-knit mittens under his arm, while he leaned over the welcome fire. The blues were gone instantly. There was such a glad light in her eyes as she advanced to meet him that Jake Ransom wondered if he had been mistaken in the quivering breath, and there was such genuine pleasure in her surprised greeting that Silas Chamberlain was warmed and fed by it. "Where's that baby?" he demanded. "You ain't gone an' tucked him into bed this time o' night, have you? I come special t' see 'im." For months Elizabeth had wanted to see Silas and the baby in a "free for all tumble" and her eyes danced with delight at the idea. She had not had such a thrill in many weeks; the young mother spoke in every line of her young face. As if by magic her troubles fell away from her. Crooking her finger beckoningly at the old man, she crept on tiptoe to the bedroom door. She had left a lamp lighted in the room and it was possible to observe the baby without him being aware of their presence. Silas had crept behind her like an Indian stalking a deer, and she caught his suppressed breath as she turned with her finger on her lips at the door. The rest of the group trailed behind with anticipatory grins. Master John Hunter lay on the bed, very wide awake, making sputtering efforts to devour his thumb, while he kicked his little feet as vigorously as the confines of the pinning-blanket would allow. Silas chuckled. Hearing a noise at the door, the heir of the house rolled his head on his pillow till his mother's face came within the range of his vision. Her absence that day had made the child more than usually eager for her presence. The little feet kicked more wildly than ever, and forgetting the generous slice of thumb still to be devoured, he grinned such a vast and expansive grin that the hand to which the thumb was attached, being free, joined the other in waving salutations of such joyful pantomime that the object of his industrious beckonings, completely carried into the current, rushed at him and, sweeping him up in her arms, tossed him on high as gleefully as if she had not been weighed down by care but a moment before the old man's advent into the room. "There, Mr. Chamberlain, was there ever another like him?" she cried.