“Now, look ‘ere, you just stop it, Master Peter. It’s no time for talkin’; you’ll ‘ear soon enough. You and your teeny weeny ones!”
Peter lay down, his little heart choking. Why wouldn’t Grace tell him?
“But, Grace———”
“Shut up. I’m a-sayin’ of me prayers.”
In the morning the hushed suspense still hung about the house. When he raised his piping voice, Grace shook him roughly. At breakfast his father’s brows were puckered—he wasn’t a bit happy like the funny man. When the table had been cleared, he laid aside his paper and sat Peter on his knee before him. “Something happened last night, sonny. You’ve got a little brother.”
“Not a sister, Daddy?”
Peter cried at that; no wonder they were all so sad. “But we asked God for a sister partickerlarly.”
All day as he played in a whisper by himself, he tried to think things out. God had become confused at the last moment, or the angel had: the wrong baby had been brought to their house. But where was the right one?
That evening the angel remembered his error and took the baby back.
Peter was being undressed for bed and Grace was crying terribly. She had just slipped him into his long, pink nightgown when his father came in hurriedly. He caught him up, wrapping a blanket round him and ran with him downstairs. The door of the room which he had watched all day was opened by a man in black. The room was in darkness, save for a shaded lamp. There were several people present; all of them whispered and walked on tiptoe. He raised himself up in his father’s arms. On the bed his mother lay weak and listless; her eyes were blue and vacant. She seemed to have shrunk and tears stole down her cheeks unheeded. Her hair seemed heavy for her head and lay across the pillow in two broad plaits. In her arms was a little bundle. The man in black commenced to talk huskily. No one answered; everyone listened to what he said. Suddenly he stooped to take the bundle from his mother, but her arms tightened. “I’ll keep him as long as God lets me.”