"Forgive me, Jack!" I exclaimed, repentantly. "I know that you've had an awfully hard time, poor boy. And I promise you that I shall try my best to make life easier for you, from now on. And now, Jack, do try to get to sleep! I'll see to it that you are perfectly comfortable to-night, and to-morrow we'll talk about the future. Would you like to have me sing to you, Jack, as I rock you?"
The baby fairly shook with suppressed laughter at the suggestion.
"Doesn't it seem absurd, Clarissa?" he gasped, between chuckles. "Just imagine what it really means. You're about to hum hush-a-bye-baby to Number One, while Number Two is down-stairs talking scientific rubbish to a lot of old fogies! If you should ever write your memoirs, my dear----"
"Hush, Jack!" I cried, petulantly, setting the chair in motion. "I shall never write anything for publication."
"Nonsense," commented the baby, drowsily. "Everybody does. You'll be sure to try it on some day. What a story you could tell, couldn't you, my dear? You might call it, with my permission, 'Clarissa's Troublesome Baby.'"
CHAPTER IX.
A BOSTON GIRL.
It would be curious if we should find science and philosophy taking up again the old theory of metempsychosis. But stranger things have happened in the history of human opinion.--James Freeman Clarke.
It was only through the exercise of the nicest care that I escaped a complete nervous collapse during the weeks immediately following our now famous dinner to Herr Plätner. I was tempted at times to run off to Europe and leave my fevered household to fend for itself. I seemed to spend the larger part of my time in keeping Jack quiet and Tom cool. Which was the more difficult task I am unable to say. Jack remained stubbornly unreasonable regarding the kind of nurse he was willing to submit to, while Tom grumbled continually because I spent so much time with the baby.
"What is the trouble in the nursery, Clarissa?" the latter asked me one morning at breakfast. "You have tried ten different experiments there since that crazy woman left us, and now you tell me that her place is again vacant. We pay the highest wages, Horatio is not a sickly, fretful child, but still these alleged nurses come and go, offering, so far as I can learn, only the flimsiest excuses for throwing up a seemingly desirable situation. There must be something radically wrong up there. Have you any idea, my dear, what it is?"