It was hard to imagine Katherine without her children. She had always been with them, and had taken them everywhere with her. Indeed, she had been ridiculous about them, running to the school to say that she feared Marty was tired, and calling in the doctor on any pretext. Yes, she would be missing them to-night!
“Good God, haven’t I missed them for the last six months?” he thought. “They are my children, too!”
He glanced at their little dark heads bent over their plates, at their blunt little fingers grasping the new knives and forks, and such a wave of tenderness and pain swept over him that he could scarcely breathe.
“I want to keep them!” he thought. “I want to give them the very best! Poor little things!”
After dinner he took them into the sitting room and read to them from one of the new books. They were passionately interested.
“Go on! Go on, daddy!” they cried, whenever he stopped to puff at his cigar.
At eight o’clock came the moment he dreaded.
“They’ll miss their mother,” he thought. “It’ll be hard, this first night.”
“We’ll have a race with the undressing,” he said. “Call me when you are ready—and the first one in bed gets a prize!”
That worked very well. In an incredibly short space of time Marty shouted: