That
was years ago, of course; but it was rather an expensive paper...
and it hasn't faded in the least..." she broke off incoherently.
"It hasn't faded?"
"No--and so I thought...as we don't use the room for anything ...
now that Aunt Sophronia is dead...I thought I might...
you might...oh, Julian, if you could only have seen it just
waking up in its crib!"
"Seen what--where? You haven't got a baby upstairs?"
"Oh, no--not _yet_," she said, with her rare laugh--the girlish
bubbling of merriment that had seemed one of her chief graces in the
early days. It occurred to him that he had not given her enough
things to laugh about lately. But then she needed such very
elementary things: it was as difficult to amuse her as a savage. He
concluded that he was not sufficiently simple.
"Alice," he said, almost solemnly, "what _do_ you mean?"
She hesitated a moment: he saw her gather her courage for a supreme
effort. Then she said slowly, gravely, as though she were
pronouncing a sacramental phrase:
"I'm so lonely without a little child--and I thought perhaps you'd
let me adopt one....It's at the hospital...its mother is
dead...and I could...pet it, and dress it, and do things for
it...and it's such a good baby...you can ask any of the
nurses...it would never, _never_ bother you by crying..."
II
Lethbury accompanied his wife to the hospital in a mood of chastened
wonder. It did not occur to him to oppose her wish. He knew, of
course, that he would have to bear the brunt of the situation: the
jokes at the club, the inquiries, the explanations.
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