"I don't see why. The child would be perfectly safe. George is
right here if anything happened!"

"George--but George isn't his mother!" Rachael fell silent, biting
her lip, a little shadow between her brows. "What is it--the
convention?" she presently asked. "Do you HAVE to go?"

"It isn't absolutely necessary," Warren said dryly. But this was
enough for Rachael, who opened the subject that evening when
George and Alice Valentine were there.

"George, DOES Warren have to go to this London convention, or
whatever it is?"

"Not necessarily," smiled Doctor Valentine. "Why, doesn't he want
to go?"

"I don't want him to go!" Rachael asserted.

"It would be a senseless risk to take that baby across the ocean,"
Alice contributed, and no more was said of the possibility then or
at any other time, to Rachael's great content.

But when the winter season was well begun, and Jimmy delicious in
his diminutive furs, Doctor Gregory and his wife had a serious
talk, late on a snowy afternoon, and Rachael realized then that
her husband had been carrying a slight sense of grievance over
this matter for many weeks.

He had come in at six o'clock, and was changing his clothes for