disturb the deaf old couple.

It was at these times that the old feeling of loneliness came back so
overwhelmingly. Grandpa and Grandma, as they called them, were kind in
their way, but even to their own children they had been
undemonstrative and cold. Often in the evenings they seemed to draw so
entirely within themselves, she with her knitting and he with his
paper or accounts, that Steven felt shut out, and apart. "Just the
strangers within thy gates," he sometimes thought to himself. He had
heard that expression a long time ago, and it often came back to him.
Then he would put his arm around Robin and hug him up close, feeling
that the world was so big and lonesome, and that he had no one else to
care for but him.

Sometimes he took him up early to the little room under the roof, and,
lying on the side of the bed, made up more marvellous stories than any
the book contained.

Often they drew the big wooden rocking-chair close to the window, and,
sitting with their arms around each other, looked out on the moonlit
stillness of the summer night. Then, with their eyes turned starward,
they talked of the far country beyond; for Steven tried to keep
undimmed in Robin's baby memory a living picture of the father and
mother he was so soon forgetting.

"Don't you remember," he would say, "how papa used to come home in the
evening and take us both on his knees, and sing 'Kingdom Coming' to
us? And how mamma laughed and called him a big boy when he got down on
the floor and played circus with us?