"He doesn't like his--" I began, impulsively, and then laughed, rather foolishly. The influence of my dream, it appeared, was still upon me.
"Doesn't like what?" asked Tom, eying me searchingly, evidently surprised at my untimely hilarity.
"Game and salads and other luncheon things," I explained, adroitly, suddenly glad that the evening was at an end and that I could soon quiet my throbbing nerves by sleep.
"We'll have some bread and milk for him," suggested Tom, hospitably. "Maybe he won't yell at me if we give him something to eat--something in his line, you know."
Again I succumbed to temptation and laughed aloud. "How little you know about babies, Tom," I remarked, in my most superior way; but even as I spoke the horrible suspicion crept over me again that I, also, might have much to learn about my own little boy.
CHAPTER III.
MY FIRST AND SECOND.
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
Which makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a something that came and went.
--James Russell Lowell.
I lunched with Tom and Jack the next day. It was an appalling function, driving me to the very verge of hysteria and destroying forever my belief in my dream theory. My first husband sat in his new high chair, pounding the table with a spoon, as if calling the meeting to order, while my second husband sat gazing at the baby with a fatuous smile on his handsome face that testified to his inability to rise to the situation. Behind the baby's chair stood his nurse, evidently prepared to defend her prerogatives as the protector of the child's health. Lurking in the background was the phlegmatic butler, no better pleased than the nurse at this experiment of Tom's.
"That's it! Go it, Horatio!" cried Tom, nervously. "Hit the table again, my boy. That's what it's for."