O happy, happy
home! may God for ever smile upon you! There should be a special grace
for happy homes. George's set us 'collecting' such, with results
undreamed of by youthful cynic. Take courage, Reader, if haply you stand
with hesitating toe above the fatal plunge. Fear not, you can swim if
you will. Of course, you must take care that your joint poetry-maker be
such a one as George's. One must not seem to forget the loving wife who
made such dreaming as his possible. He did not; and, indeed, had you
told him of his happiness, he would but have turned to her with a smile
that said, 'All of thee, my love'; while, did one ask of this and that,
how quickly 'Yes! that was George's idea,' laughed along her lips.
While we sat talking that first evening, there suddenly came three
cries, as of three little heads straining out of a nest, for 'Father';
and obedient, with a laugh, he left us. This, we soon learnt, was a part
of the sweet evening ritual of home. After mother's more practical
service had been rendered the little ones, and they were cosily 'tucked
in,' then came 'father's turn,' which consisted of his sitting by their
bedside--Owen and Geoffrey on one hand, and little queen Phyllis,
maidenlike in solitary cot, on the other--and crooning to them a little
evening song. In the dark, too, I should say, for it was one of his wise
provisions that they should be saved from ever fearing that; and that,
whenever they awoke to find it round them in the middle of the night, it
should bring them no other association but 'father's voice.
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