He had a great pitiful imagination for this unknown woe of maternity, which possibly gave him as great a power of sympathy as actual knowledge.
"You are a good fellow, Jerome, an' I hope I shall be able to do somethin' to pay you some day," John Upham said, huskily, when they were in the bedroom putting that also in order.
"I don't want any pay for what I give," Jerome returned.
When Jerome started for home, Mrs.Upham and the baby were both asleep in the clean bedroom.

Retracing his steps along the pleasant road, he was keenly happy, with perhaps the true happiness of his life, to which he would always turn at last from all others, and which would survive the death and loss of all others.
He pictured John Upham's house as he found it and as he left it with purest self-gratulation.

He had not gone far before he heard a clamor of childish voices; there were two, but they sounded like a troop.
John Upham's twin girls broke through the wayside bushes like little wild things.

Their hands were full of withering flowers.

He called them, and bade them be very still when they went home, so as not to waken their mother and the baby, and they hung their heads with bashful assent.