playing Shadow Man were a new role.

"Why thumbs?" he whispered. "Why not lips, say, or eyes? I thought women
kissed kiddies' eyes. Hope I haven't made a mistake--" as if he had some
secret desire for women to kiss the eyes of little children. "If you
don't mind kissing 'em when you go in there--"

"I shall kiss her thumbs," Miss Theodosia said firmly. "They were burned
at the stake for me. I know how burned thumbs feel."

But the Shadow Man stubbornly persisted.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll go back now and kiss her thumbs, if
you'll kiss her eyes when you go in; as--er--a favor. 'Stoop over the
little sleeper,' you know, and 'press your mother's lips to the closed
blue orbs.'" He seemed to be quoting something.

"But I haven't any mother's lips," sighed Miss Theodosia, "only the kind
for thumbs--just thumbs. I'm sorry," she added humbly. Curiously she
experienced no surprise at this intimate turn of a conversation with a
Shadow Man at midnight.

"That's all right--that's all right," the Shadow Man assured her. "Only
thought I'd feel a little better to prove it was done that way. Hadn't
any business mixing up with women's lips and kiddies' orbs, anyway!
Serves me right." And now it was his turn to be humble. "Good night,"
and he was gone.

It was into a tiny bedroom off the kitchen, where a needle of light from
a turned-down lamp barely pricked the darkness, that Miss Theodosia