“I shall miss you--terribly, my dear,” said he. “But I'll be the gainer in the end. You'll give me Tony as a sort of younger brother. I am getting to be an old man, darling--and soon I shall find the need of _les jeunes_ in my painting life. You can't understand that yet. Tony will bring around me the younger generation with new enthusiasms and fresh impulses. It is to my very great good, dear. And if God gives you children, I'll be the only grandfather they'll ever have, poor things, and I'd like to have a child about me again. I have experience. I have washed your chubby face and hands, _moi qui vous parle_, and undressed you and put you to bed, my young lady who is about to be married.” “Oh, Jimmie, I remember it--and I had to tell you how to do everything.” “It seems the day before yesterday,” said Jimmie. “_Eheu fugaces!_” The next day when she in her wedding-dress (a present from Connie Deering) walked down the aisle on her husband's arm and stole a shy glance at him, radiant, full of the promise and the pride of manhood, and met the glad love in his eyes, she forgot all else in the throbbing joy of her young life's completion. It was only afterwards when she was changing her dress, with Connie Deering's assistance, in her own little room, that she became again conscience-stricken. “You _will_ look after Jimmie while I am away, _won't_ you?” she asked tragically--they were going to the Isle of Wight for their honeymoon. “I would look after him altogether if he would let me,” said Connie, in an abrupt, emotional little outburst. Aline drew a quick breath. “What do you mean?” Connie threw the simple travelling-hat, whose feathers she was daintily touching, upon the bed. “What do you think I mean?” she laughed nervously. “I'm not an old woman. I'm as lonely as Jimmie will be--and--” “What?” “Oh!---only I've found out that I love Jimmie as much as a silly woman can love anybody, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it--and you may be quite sure I'll see that no harm comes to him during your honeymoon, dear.” The ensuing conversation nearly caused the bride to miss her train. But no bride ever left her girlhood's room more luminously happy. On the threshold she turned and threw her arms round Connie Deering's neck. “I'll arrange it all when I come back,” she whispered. And Aline kept her word. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Love Is, by William J. Locke