"You're right, Miss Doane. You can't help it." And before he was really aware of what he did, he bent over the squirming baby and gave it a little spank. The baby twisted an astonished face around the nurse's knee. Seeing the man looking down at him, he puckered up his little face and the big eyes filled with tears. Mr. Thornton stooped quickly. "You poor little tad!" he said. "Did I scare you? Here"--as the wails became louder--"come here." He took the baby into his arms and tossed him high over his head. "It's all right, baby; I didn't mean it." As he was holding the baby above him, laughing into the now laughing face, a voice from the doorway said, "Jim." Mr. Thornton nearly dropped the baby in his astonishment. He looked at the vision of the pretty woman standing in the doorway, and then hastily deposited the baby in the nurse's lap. "Mary!" he said. "Mary!" She came to him, seeing nothing in the room but the man. "Oh, Jim, you are human after all. You are, you are!" The astonished nurse saw a woman folded in a man's arms and a woman crying happily on a man's shoulders. Drusilla watched them for a moment and then went to the door, where Daphne was waiting. The girl took Drusilla's hand excitedly. "It worked, didn't it, Miss Doane; it worked!" They waited in Drusilla's room for quite a while before two shamefaced but happy looking people appeared, hand in hand. Mr. Thornton went up to Drusilla and took her hand in both his own. "Miss Doane," he said enthusiastically, "start all the asylums--red, black, or yellow--that you want. Take the whole African race if you want to, and I'll see that you get cooks enough for them." Mary Deane laughed--the laugh of a happy woman who has come into her own. "And, Miss Doane," she added, "we'll do better than that. Rastus isn't your colored baby any more. He's Jim's and mine. We're going to see to his education, for if it hadn't been for Rastus--well--perhaps there'd never have been a happy Mary." "Or," said Mr. Thornton with a glad laugh, "or a Sunny Jim." CHAPTER XI A light tap was heard on the door of John's sitting-room. "John, are you still up? Can I come in?" Before John could answer, Drusilla was in the room. "John, I'm ashamed of you! Has this been goin' on all the time, and I didn't know it. It's past twelve." John said apologetically: "It isn't late, is it, Drusilla? I didn't think of the time." "Late! It's past twelve, I tell you, and you had ought to be in bed gettin' your beauty sleep. Nights was made for sleepin', John Brierly." John shook his head. "Oh, no, Drusilla; nights were made for reading. There is no joy like a long quiet evening and Carlyle, for example, for company." "He couldn't be company for me at this time o' night. But you don't ask me nothin' about my dinner party, my first dinner party, and my dance." John looked longingly at his book, then carefully placed a marker in it and closed it.