“Mice and Mumps!” groaned Harry, straining at the tap. “Mice and Mumps!”
He came to her wiping his hands on his handkerchief. “Too big! Look here, supposing this house isn’t washed away by that tap. Suppose it’s still standing here tomorrow. Take a broad, courageous view of the thing. Suppose this isn’t the beginning of the Great Flood of London, and that we’re going to live in a house and not an ark. Well, what you’ve got to remember is that we’re not coming in here for a week. We’ve got to look ahead. Take these two rooms. Why, you can see what they’re for, what they’ve been. Opening into one another, and those little bars on the windows, and that protected fireplace. Nurseries. Day nursery and night nursery.”
Rosalie laughed.
CHAPTER IV
That’s all done. The thing traverses the waters of the years, as across seas a ship, and makes presently a new shore, a new clime, wherein are met occasions new and strange, not anticipated by Rosalie.
Here is one.
Habitant in the new continent across these years, she is wife and, though she had laughed, is mother, and on a day is with her Harry, and Harry is saying, not at all with any hardness in his voice, but very gravely:
“I have a right to a home.”