The February sunshine lay warm and bright and still over Las Plumas and the sky bent low and blue and cloudless above the town. Bright feathered birds were darting through the orchards and trilling their nesting songs, the peach tree buds were showing their pink noses, and the promise of spring was everywhere. In the big, wide hall of Pierre Delarue’s house Marguerite stood beside the door of her room, talking with Emerson Mead, while he clumsily buttoned her gloves. She was dressed in a traveling gown, and as his glance wandered over her figure his eyes shone with admiration. Tall though he was and superb of physique, her head reached his shoulder and her figure matched his in its own strength and beauty.

“Tom and Nick look as forlorn as two infant orphans,” he was saying to her. “You would think I had died instead of getting married. Nick has hinted that he means to go on a spree, and Tom says he’ll lock him up in their room and sit on his chest for a week if he tries to make that kind of a break.”

“Do you think he will?” Marguerite asked.

“Sit on him? Yes, I think likely. He’s done it before, and it’s about the only thing that will keep Nick sober when he has made up his mind that he wants to get drunk. It’s a good plan to keep Nick sober, too, for when he gets drunk most anything’s likely to happen.”

“No, I meant, do you think he will get drunk?”

Emerson shrugged his shoulders. “I reckon that will depend on whether Tom goes to sleep or not.”

“Where are they?”

“Out on the porch with Bye-Bye.”

They went out on the veranda where Tom and Nick were standing, and Marguerite put a hand on the arm of each, looking up in their faces with smiling earnestness. “I wonder,” she said, “if I could ask you boys to do something for me while we are gone?”

They turned toward her eagerly. “You bet we’ll do anything you-all want us to, Mrs.—Mrs.—” Nick tried to say “Mrs. Mead,” choked a little, and ended with “Mrs. Emerson.” And “Mrs. Emerson” she was to him and Tom from that time forth.

“What can we-all do?” asked Tom.

“Why, I’ve been hoping you wouldn’t mind looking after Paul a little bit for me. I am so afraid he will miss me, because I’ve always been with him. The housekeeper will take good care of him, of course, but I know he will be lonely if there is nothing to distract his mind. And I couldn’t be happy, even on my wedding journey, if I thought my little Bye-Bye was crying for me.”

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Emerson,” Nick exclaimed. “We’ll give him so much fun he won’t know you’re gone. I’ll bring my horse and take him to ride every day.”

“We’ll buy all the playthings in town for him.”

“We’ll tote him around all the time. It’ll give us something to do and keep us out of mischief. He shan’t shed a tear while you’re gone.”

“Here, Bye-Bye,” called Tom, “come and ride on my shoulder.” And mounted on that big, high pedestal the child was marched up and down the porch, laughing and clapping his hands. “We’ll stay and amuse him while you-all go to the depot, so he won’t cry after you.”

“I’ll make him some reins out of my Chiny pigtail,” said Nick. “You-all go right along, Mrs. Emerson, and don’t you worry once. He shan’t whimper while you’re gone, and he’ll have such a good time he’ll be sorry to see you come home.”

Marguerite looked back from the carriage window as they drove away and saw little Paul holding fast to the middle of Nick’s precious queue, laughing and shouting, while two tall figures attached to its ends pranced and kicked and cavorted up and down the veranda.

THE END