His eyes never left her face.
"Little darling," said the lady friend, but nevertheless disappointed.
"Lift him up, Jane.

I'd like to see him in your arms." But she shook her head.

She moved away from the cot.

Something so precious had been in that smile of her son's that she would not risk any rebuff.
Henry Fitzgeorge gave the strange lady one last look of disgust.
"If that comes again I'll bite it," he said to his Friend.
When these visitors had departed, he lay there remembering those eyes that had looked into his.

All that day he remembered them, and it may be that his Friend, as he watched, sighed because the time for launching him had now come, that one more soul had passed from his sheltering arms out into the highroad of fine adventures.