While she was taking lunch, Rose came to see her. She entered the room with much of her old effusiveness; she kissed and petted her sister-in-law, and said: “Give me a strong cup of tea, Yanna. I am worn out. Baby was ill all night, and Antony would neither sleep nor let any one else sleep.”
“But if Emma were sick you would not be able to sleep, I am sure. And she must be better, or you would not have left the little one at all.”
“Mamma is watching her. I just ran over to see you. It always rests me and makes me strong to see you, Yanna. I know what you are going to say—that I might, then, come oftener—so also I might go oftener to church. But I do not love you the less, Yanna; when I am good I always love you.”
“Dear Rose, I wish you were always what you call ‘good.’”
“I wish I were! I do long to be good! I am so weak and silly, but there is a good Rose somewhere in me. Do you think baby is really very sick?”
“Babies all suffer dreadfully, Rose, in teething. I often wonder how grown-up people would endure half-a-dozen teeth forcing their way through sore, inflamed gums. There would be swearing among the men, and hysteria among the women, and we should all do as Burns did when he had only one troublesome tooth—kick the furniture about—really, or figuratively.”
“Poor Emma! I do love her! I do love her! If there is anything on earth I love, it is Emma. But Antony is simply absurd. He insists on the whole house teething, too. He will have no company; and some one has to sit by Emma’s cot all night because, he says, ‘she must need cold water often,’ and when I told him this morning that we had all gone through the 228 same suffering once in our lives, he looked at me as if he thought I was a brute. I was only trying to aggravate him. He ought not to tempt me to aggravate him; for I cannot help doing it. And of course, I love Emma far better than he does. I nearly died for her. I was provoked with Antony this morning.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“He says baby is to go to the mountains, so we are to have the Woodsome house; and papa and mamma are going to Europe. Papa wants ‘authorities.’ I should think the British Museum may perhaps satisfy him.”
“We are going to Woodsome also, this summer. How soon will you leave the city?”