She took a very tender leave of him when his father came to carry him home to bed. He seemed more tired than usual that night, she thought; perhaps he had talked too much. He would be rested in the morning, she said to herself, as she took up her knitting. She could not see what Stephen's father saw as he lifted him from her knee—that a change was creeping over his little thin face. Aunt Cordelia saw it, too, as she came to kiss him when he was carried past her window; and she followed Stephen's father home, and helped him to undress the little boy, and to lay him in bed.