“I don’t know what else a gentleman should do,” answered Dick; “or a lady, either. Mrs. Lenox would have done as much for any baby, her own or another.”
“Much she would!” said Lena sharply. “I’ve been at her house. She has rafts of nurses to do all the waiting on her children. I guess she doesn’t let them trouble her any more than she can help. If she’s unlucky enough to have the squally little things, she keeps away from them.”
Even as she spoke, Lena realized that her acid voice was a mistake, but she said to herself that she was tired of acting, and it did not make any difference what Dick thought now. She was his wife.
“Perhaps you don’t know the whole, Lena,” Dick answered. “I happen to have seen Mrs. Lenox when she was devoting herself to a sick baby, and Madeline has told me of the kind of personal care she gives.”
“The more fool she, when she can get some one else to do it for her,” said Lena, with feminine change of front.
“Is that the way you feel about children?” asked Dick soberly.
“I suppose they are necessary evils,” said Lena with a smart laugh. “But I’d rather they’d be necessary to other women than to me.”
“Well, perhaps that’s a natural feeling, when we’re young and like to be irresponsible; but I fancy, dear, that things look pretty different as we get along and are willing to pay the price for our happinesses—to pay for love with service and self-sacrifice. As for me, I pray that you and I may not some day be childless old folks.”
Lena glanced at him sidewise as they walked, and his somber face showed her that her mistake went deeper than she had suspected.
“I’m sorry I was cross,” she said with pretty contrition, but her prettiness and contrition did not have their usual exhilarating effect on Dick. Lena even turned and laid her hand softly on his arm. Still he did not look at her.