“Why, Lucien! You don’t suppose I could send this sick baby back to that uninviting house with only hired help in charge! Besides, I don’t believe he’d stay with a stranger. He seems to have taken a fancy to me.”
Diogenes confirmed this belief by a languid lifting of his eyelids, as he feelingly patted her cheek with his baby fingers.
I forebore to suggest that the fancy seemed to be mutual. Diogenes, sick, was no longer an “imp of the devil”, but a normal, appealing little child. It occurred to me that possibly the care of a sick Polydore might develop Silvia’s tiny germ of child-ken.
“Keep him here of course,” I agreed, “but––the other children must return home.”
“Diogenes would miss them,” she said quickly, “and the doctor says his whims 57 must be humored while he is sick. He is almost asleep now. I think he will let me put him down in his own little bed. Ptolemy brought it over here. Pull back the covers for me, Lucien. There!”
Diogenes half opened his eyes, as she laid him in the bed and smiled wanly.
“Mudder!” he cooed.
Silvia flushed and looked as if she dreaded some expression of mirth from me. Relieved by my silence and a suggestion of moisture in the region of my eyes––the day was quite warm––she confessed:
“He has called me that all the morning.”