immediately; and remember about the marmalade."

Reassured, smiling through tears, the children trooped off, it being the
bathing hour; and Mrs. Gerard threw her fur stole over one shoulder and
linked her slender arm in her brother's.

"You see, I'm not much of a mother," she said; "if I was I'd stay here
all day and every day, week in and year out, and try to make these poor
infants happy. I have no business to leave them for one second!"

"Wouldn't they get too much of you?" suggested Selwyn.

"Thanks. I suppose that even a mother had better practise an artistic
absence occasionally. Are they not sweet? _What_ do you think of them?
You never before saw the three youngest; you saw Drina when you went
east--and Billy was a few months old--what do you think of them?
Honestly, Phil?"

"All to the good, Ninette; very ornamental. Drina--and that Josephine
kid are real beauties. I--er--take to Billy tremendously. He told me
that he'd locked up his nurses. I ought to have interfered. It was
really my fault, you see."

"And you didn't make him let them out? You are not going to be very good
morally for my young. Tell me, Phil, have you seen Austin?"

"I went to the Trust Company, but he was attending a directors' confab.
How is he? He's prosperous anyhow, I observe," with a humorous glance
around the elaborate hallway which they were traversing.