"Nick!" she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed that hung out great branches to envelop them.

"Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!"

"Reasonable--oh, reasonable!" she sobbed through laughter.

"Unreasonable, then! That's even better."

She freed herself, and drew back gently. "Nick, I swore I wouldn't leave them; and I can't. It's not only my promise to their mother--it's what they've been to me themselves. You don't, know... You can't imagine the things they've taught me. They're awfully naughty at times, because they're so clever; but when they're good they're the wisest people I know." She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. "But why shouldn't we take them with us?" she exclaimed.

Her husband's arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.

"Take them with us?"

"Why not?"

"All five of them?"

"Of course--I couldn't possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will help us to look after the young ones."

"Help us!" he groaned.

"Oh, you'll see; they won't bother you. Just leave it to me; I'll manage--" The word stopped her short, and an agony of crimson suffused her from brow to throat. Their eyes met; and without a word he stooped and laid his lips gently on the stain of red on her neck.

"Nick," she breathed, her hands in his.

"But those children--"

Instead of answering, she questioned: "Where are we going?"

His face lit up.

"Anywhere, dearest, that you choose."

"Well--I choose Fontainebleau!" she exulted.

"So do I! But we can't take all those children to an hotel at Fontainebleau, can we?" he questioned weakly. "You see, dear, there's the mere expense of it--"

Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. "The expense won't amount to much. I've just remembered that Angele, the bonne, has a sister who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned pension which must be almost empty at this time of year. I'm sure I can ma--arrange easily,"

she hurried on, nearly tripping again over the fatal word. "And just think of the treat it will be to them! This is Friday, and I can get them let off from their afternoon cla.s.ses, and keep them in the country till Monday. Poor darlings, they haven't been out of Paris for months!

And I daresay the change will cure Geordie's cough--Geordie's the youngest," she explained, surprised to find herself, even in the rapture of reunion, so absorbed in the welfare of the Fulmers.

She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but instead of prolonging the argument he simply questioned: "Was Geordie the chap you had in your arms when you opened the front door the night before last?"

She echoed: "I opened the front door the night before last?"

"To a boy with a parcel."

"Oh," she sobbed, "you were there? You were watching?"

He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm and full as on the night of their moon over Como.

In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her forces marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick's luggage deposited in the vestibule, and the children, just piling down to breakfast, were summoned in to hear the news.

It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick's presence took them aback. But when, between laughter and embraces, his ident.i.ty, and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them, Junie dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: "Then I suppose we may talk about you to Susy now?"--and thereafter all five addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday.

From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind.

Treats so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were rare in the young Fulmers' experience, and had it not been for Junie's steadying influence Susy's charges would have got out of hand. But young Nat, appealed to by Nick on the ground of their common manhood, was induced to forego celebrating the event on his motor horn (the very same which had tortured the New Hampshire echoes), and to a.s.sert his authority over his juniors; and finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each child to fit into it like a bit of a picture puzzle.

Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless felt an undercurrent of anxiety. There had been no time as yet, between her and Nick, to revert to money matters; and where there was so little money it could not, obviously, much matter. But that was the more reason for being secretly aghast at her intrepid resolve not to separate herself from her charges. A three days' honey-moon with five children in the party-and children with the Fulmer appet.i.te--could not but be a costly business; and while she settled details, packed them off to school, and routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house contained in the way of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on the familiar financial problem.

Yes--it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through the bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the perpetual serpent in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep with such sc.r.a.ps as she could beg, borrow or steal for it. And she supposed it was the price that fate meant her to pay for her blessedness, and was surer than ever that the blessedness was worth it. Only, how was she to compound the business with her new principles?

With the children's things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to waste on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony if the chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been the chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with this question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward on a great gale of plans and preparations, in the course of which she whirled Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone to Fontainebleau.

Once he was gone--and after watching him safely round the corner--she too got into her wraps, and transferring a small packet from her dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a different direction.

x.x.x

IT took two br.i.m.m.i.n.g taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to the station on their second honey-moon. In the first were Nick, Susy and the luggage of the whole party (little Nat's motor horn included, as a last concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if the bonne came, there would be n.o.body left to look after them.

At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick's arms and held up the procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure that the bonne had brought the house-key. It was found of course that she hadn't but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan got under way again, and reached the station just as the train was starting; and there, by some miracle of good nature on the part of the guard, they were all packed together into an empty compartment--no doubt, as Susy remarked, because train officials never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat them kindly.

The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of superhuman goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed, and they were not to be quieted till it had been agreed that Nat should blow his motor-horn at each halt, while the twins called out the names of the stations, and Geordie, with the canaries and kitten, affected to change trains.

Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel, combined with over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently provided by Nick, overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy that could be appeased only by Susy's telling him stories till they arrived at Fontainebleau.

The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying foliage; and after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the pension Susy confessed that she had promised the children a scamper in the forest, and buns in a tea-shop afterward. Nick placidly agreed, and darkness had long fallen, and a great many buns been consumed, when at length the procession turned down the street toward the pension, headed by Nick with the sleeping Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless with fatigue and food, hung heavily on Susy.

It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the children might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and Susy establish themselves in an adjacent hotel. Nick had flattered himself that they might remove their possessions there when they returned from the tea-room; but Susy, manifestly surprised at the idea, reminded him that her charges must first be given their supper and put to bed. She suggested that he should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and promised to join him as soon as Geordie was asleep.

She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even in a deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a sulky stove; and after he had glanced through his morning's mail, hurriedly thrust into his pocket as he left Paris, he sank into a state of drowsy beat.i.tude.

It was all the maddest business in the world, yet it did not give him the sense of unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden dream; and he sat and waited with the security of one in whom dear habits have struck deep roots. In this mood of acquiescence even the presence of the five Fulmers seemed a natural and necessary consequence of all the rest; and when Susy at length appeared, a little pale and tired, with the brooding inward look that busy mothers bring from the nursery, that too seemed natural and necessary, and part of the new order of things.

They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in the damp December night, they were walking back to the hotel under a sky full of rain-clouds. They seemed to have said everything to each other, and yet barely to have begun what they had to tell; and at each step they took, their heavy feet dragged a great load of bliss.

In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they groped their way to the third floor room which was the only one that Susy had found cheap enough. A ray from a street-lamp struck up through the unshuttered windows; and after Nick had revived the fire they drew their chairs close to it, and sat quietly for a while in the dark.

Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind to break it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense of permanence, of having at last unlimited time before him in which to taste his joy and let its sweetness stream through him. But at length he roused himself to say: "It's queer how things coincide. I've had a little bit of good news in one of the letters I got this morning."

Susy took the announcement serenely. "Well, you would, you know," she commented, as if the day had been too obviously designed for bliss to escape the notice of its dispensers.

"Yes," he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. "During the cruise I did a couple of articles on Crete--oh, just travel-impressions, of course; they couldn't be more. But the editor of the New Review has accepted them, and asks for others. And here's his cheque, if you please! So you see you might have let me take the jolly room downstairs with the pink curtains. And it makes me awfully hopeful about my book."

He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some rea.s.sertion of wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of Alexander; and deep down under the lover's well-being the author felt a faint twinge of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried out, ravenously and without preamble: "Oh, Nick, Nick--let me see how much they've given you!"

He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. "A couple of hundred, you mercenary wretch!"