"The father was killed. That's proved. The mother died——"
It was at this point that the accumulation of family eccentricities proved too much for Mrs. Payson. The "faint feeling" mushroomed into a full-sized faint from which they thought she would never recover. Aunt Charlotte had come upon her younger sister seated saggingly in a chair in the living room. Her face was livid. She was breathing stertorously. They put her to bed. For a long time she did not regain consciousness. But almost immediately on doing so she tried to get up.
"Well! I'm not staying in bed. What's the matter! What's the matter! Don't you think you can keep me in bed."
Followed another attack. The doctor said that a third would probably prove the last. So she stayed in bed now, rebellious still, and indomitable. One could not but admire the will that still burned so bright in the charred ruin of the body.
So it was a subdued homecoming that Lottie met. When she stepped off the train at the Twelfth Street station with an unmistakable bundle in her arms, Belle and Henry kissed her across the bundle and said, almost simultaneously, "Mother's been quite sick, Lottie. You can't keep her at the house, you know."
"Mother sick? How sick?"
They told her. And again, "You see, there can't be a baby in the house."
"Oh, yes," said Lottie, not in argument, but almost amusedly, as though it were too ridiculous to argue. "Don't you want to see her?"
"Yes," said Belle, nervously. And "W-what's its name?" asked Henry.
"I think Claire would be nice, don't you?" Lottie turned back the flap of the downy coverlet and Claire blinked up at them rosily and caught this unguarded opportunity to shoot a wanton fist in the air.