It was true. Sheila’s sweet ways with Tommy and Etta caused her ever so little a pang of jealousy. Her increasing fondness for Quixtus made Clementina thrill with pleasure. You may say that Clementina, essentially just, was scrupulous not to encroach upon Quixtus’s legal half-share in the child’s esteem. But a sense of justice is not an emotion. And it was emotion, silly, feminine, romantic emotion, which she did not try to explain to herself, that filled her eyes with moisture whenever she saw the two happy together. She laid her hand upon the fair hair. “Do you love your Uncle Ephim?” “I adore him,” said Sheila. “Your uncle fully reciprocates the sentiment, my dear,” said Quixtus, his hand also instinctively rising to caress the hair. So the hands of the guardians touched. Clementina withdrew hers and turned away quickly, so that he should not see the flush that sprang into her face. “We must be getting home now, dear,” she said. “Auntie is wasting precious daylight.” And with her old abruptness she left him. He followed her down the stairs. “My dear Clementina,” said he, standing bareheaded at his front door, “I wonder whether you realise how Sheila and yourself light up this dull old house for me.” She sniffed scornfully. “_I_ light up?” “_You_,” said he, with smiling emphasis. She looked at him queerly for an instant, and then went her way. The next time he saw her, a few days afterwards, one late afternoon, when she was tired after a heavy day’s painting, she railed at him, with a return of her old biting manner. He looked surprised and pained. She relented. “Forgive me, my good Ephraim,” she said, “but I’ve the rough luck to be a woman. No man alive can ever conjecture what a devil of a thing that is to be.” He smiled. “You mustn’t overwork,” said he. “A woman hasn’t the brute strength of a man.” “You’re delicious!” she said. But she was kind—exceedingly kind, to him thereafter, and fitted up the nursery in a way that made the two babies beam with delight. So Quixtus lived halcyon days.