“Look here, where are you going?” And without waiting to know, “Some of us can carry—” He was taking the burden out of the thin arms.
“No,” remonstrated the woman, as Cheviot turned in at the music-room, “we must go up to father.”
“I’ll send him down to you.”
“No, no. We’ve got to go up and—be ready.”
“Ready for what?” He fixed upon the woman a pair of faith-inspiring eyes so unclouded that she stared.
“Don’t you want to listen to the singing?” Cheviot bent smiling to the little person who lay quite content in his arms, studying the man’s face with the solemn absorption of childhood.
Not many there besides him, but because Cheviot had come in the concert had begun. Others besides Hildegarde felt this quickening of life in any room he entered. Miss Pinckney remembered she had the music of a “reel pretty song” out of the “Belle of New York.” She’d go and get it.
“Do you hear that?” Cheviot said, depositing the child on one of the rickety chairs. “You’ve just come in time,” and he stood a moment talking to the mother. The child sat askew, with its father’s great waterproof cape hitched up on one side and trailing on the other. When the little figure made the slightest movement the lop-sided chair wobbled and threatened collapse. Instantly the child desisted and became nervously engrossed in the problem of a nice equilibrium. The little face took on a look of tense uneasiness. It was plain that courage was lacking so much as to pull a good deep breath lest it draw ruin down. Cheviot, still talking with the mother, turned to take in his the small child hand that clutched the chair. Was it the look of heavy responsibility in the small face, or was it another onslaught of ice against the ship that made him say, “Music’s soon going to begin, little—what’s your name?”