“But the tea. I thought you might——”
Here Mrs. Smith broke off the speech over which her husband faltered.
“No I mightn’t; it won’t be the first time I’ve poured out tea with a baby in my arms!”
“And a nice picter she makes,” said Mrs. Carter, “my brother never sees a woman holding a baby like that but he calls her a madonner at once. I only wish he could see her.”
“I wish he could—only when she’s a trifle more like herself,” muttered Smith.
Mrs. Smith did not hear this cautious aside, but holding Jerusha Maria on her left arm, poured out the tea with her right hand, holding the Brittannia pot high up, and doing the honors with a dash. Smith took this as defiance, and withered under it.
“Dear me, what is that?” exclaimed Mrs. Carter, listening to a sound of suppressed sobs that came from the next room. “Somebody crying, I do believe.”
Mrs. Smith suspended the amber stream that was dashing into one of her best china cups, and listened. Sure enough, suppressed sobs broke from the other room, that smote her to the heart. She sat down the tea-pot, gathered up Jerusha Maria, and went into the kitchen. There she found James Laurence sitting on a chair, with both arms flung out on the table, trying his very best to smother the sound of his own uncontrollable mortification and grief.
“Why! James, my boy; what are you crying about?”
The lad lifted up his head, and hurriedly wiped the tears from his eyes.