They had breakfast together, Ross and Eddy and the child. And the rabbit was there, too, propped up against the coffeepot; he was fed with spoonfuls of water, and he got pretty wet in the process.
It was an amazing meal. It seemed to Ross sometimes that he was still asleep, and this a dream—the little kitchen filled with that strange, pale light, the snow falling steadily outside, and the child beside him.
“Why did I say I’d look after her?” he thought, with a sort of wonder. “What’s the matter with me, anyhow?”
He didn’t know, and could not understand. He was hopelessly involved, now, in this sorry muddle, and he saw, very clearly, that every step had been taken deliberately, of his own free will. He could have got out, long ago, but—here he was. And he was committed now to an undertaking almost too fantastic, too preposterous to contemplate.
Yet he did not regret it. Just as, in a shipwreck, he would have given his life for a tiny creature like this, so was he obliged now to offer it his protection. Eddy said she had nobody in the world. Very well, then; he had to stop, to turn aside from his own affairs, and lend a hand to this forlorn little fellow traveler. He had to do it.
“More!” said the child, briskly.
“More what?” asked Ross.
“More—evvysing!” she cried, bouncing up and down perilously upon the telephone directories he had piled on her chair. “More evvysing!”
“Give her some cawfee,” suggested Eddy.
“No,” said Ross. “Too young. They only have milk—things like that.”