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gradually crystallising into a whole solid morning or afternoon—how was Tony to hold out against such influences as these, when each and all meant something very like home?

“Do you know how I begin to think of you now, Tony-boy?” Alison asked him one day. “As my little brother —do you mind? You see, I never had a brother of my own—no sister either—and you don’t know how I’m loving having someone I can play elder sister to.”

She looked at him a little wistfully, this persistent fighter, not quite sure if the battle were won yet. It was. He smiled back at her, grey eyes and stern lips soft and responsive at last; indeed she might have kissed him then and not have endangered her position. She did not, she only smiled in return, well rewarded for her patience, and told him delightedly, “Why, Tony, how nice you look when you smile like that! Don’t you ever dare to look at me in that very naughty, horrid way you used to again!”

“Was I horrid?”

“Very horrid; but now you shall smile at me every day, and you don’t know how becoming it is—little brother!”

“All the same,” Tony thought after she had gone, “I don’t feel in the least like her little brother! I don’t feel very little in any way, except when I’m reading . . . I feel more like . . . the fox and the grapes. . . .”

It was the night after this capitulation that Alison dared to do what she had never dared before. Tip-toeing in on her way to bed, as she always did, to see whether the patient needed anything, she stood for a moment looking down on the sleeping boy. He looked the merest child asleep—the lines smoothed out, the mouth relaxed—one hand curled up on the counterpane, almost like a baby’s. She stooped and kissed him very lightly, then drew back, half afraid; but the even breathing continued, the boy slept on