"No," she confessed, feeling that he would consider her lacking on that account and that she must hasten to mention other attractions. "But I have a red and green bird that can talk, and a little black pony named 'Tarbaby.' It's so little that there's nobody at my house now small enough to ride it. So it stays all day long in the field and eats grass."
"I'm little enough to ride it," he began confidently.
Just then the doctor came out, and she sprang up, her heart throbbing. "I'm going now for the nurse," he said in a low tone. "She's due on the next train. Keep her as quiet as possible. Of course you'll have to let her free her mind, but promise her almost anything to soothe her. I'll be back in quarter of an hour."
Frightened at being left alone with such a weight of responsibility thrust upon her, Lloyd tiptoed into the house. In the dim light she almost stumbled over the cot on which Ned Bannon lay in a drunken stupor, and her first glance at the bed beyond made her draw back in dismay. She never would have recognized the white face on the pillow as Ida's, had it not been for the appealing eyes turned towards her.
Five years of poverty and illness and neglect had changed the pretty little school-girl into a faded, care-worn woman. She had been crying ever since she was taken sick, and now was so weak and hysterical that she caught at Lloyd with a cry, and clung to her sobbing.
"Oh, it kills me to have you find me this way!" she gasped, "when I've tried so long to hide what we've come to. But I'm glad you've come, for the baby's sake! Oh, Lloyd, what's going to become of my little Wardo!"
It was several minutes before she could talk coherently, and then she began to sob out the story of her married life, her miserable failure to reform Ned. Lloyd tried to stop her presently, thinking she was becoming delirious, but she might as well have tried to stop a high tide.
"Oh, I have been so proud!" she sobbed. "I couldn't tell anybody. I couldn't tell you now if I wasn't afraid that I might die, like that poor woman across the street last night. She's left five little children. But I can't leave my little Wardo like that!" she broke out desperately. "I know he has inherited Ned's awful appetite. I must stay and help him fight it, for it's all my fault. I gave him such a father. A father that he can never be proud of! A father that will be only a disgrace to him! Oh, why didn't somebody warn me that it was not only a husband I was choosing but my little Wardo's father! Nobody ever told me that, and I was so young I never thought of any one but myself. And now the poor little innocent soul will have to suffer for it all his life long!"
She was throwing herself about so wildly that Lloyd was frightened, and rose from her chair to call one of the neighbours. But she could not break away. Ida caught at her dress and held her fast in her frenzied clasp.
"But I tell you I won't let him grow up to be like that!" she cried with her eyes glaring wildly at the drunken man on the cot across the room. "I'll kill him with my own hands first, while he is little and good. God would understand, wouldn't he? He couldn't blame me for trying to save my baby! But if he did I'd have to do it anyway. I'd have to do it and take the punishment. I can't have my little Wardo grow up to be like that."