“Come, Mosina,” said Cricket. “Oh, Marjorie, I forgot to tell you, we named her Mosina, after Moses.”
“You are the most ridiculous children about names,” said Marjorie, laughing. “Come to dinner now. After dinner let us try that duet, Eunice.”
Marjorie and Eunice were both musical, and each played exceedingly well for their respective years. Although Cricket loved music, she had no aptitude for the piano, and her lessons had been discontinued. Instead, her talent for her pencil was being cultivated. But all the children were more or less musical. Marjorie and Eunice both had very good voices, and, with Donald’s aid, they often practised trios, as well as duets by themselves.
After dinner, Marjorie and Eunice played duets for a time, but Eunice was so impatient to get back to her adopted baby, and made so many mistakes, that presently Marjorie, in disgust, sent her off. The two younger girls immediately flew up to the nursery.
’Liza was getting the twins ready for bed, and gave Eunice some night-things of Kenneth’s for her charge, together with a shower of instructions for the night. Then the children carried off the baby, nodding and heavy-eyed, but quiet and stolid still.
With much giggling and fun, and a feeling of immense importance, the two girls finally had Mosina undressed and ready for bed. By this time she was almost asleep on their hands.
“Just see this room!” exclaimed Eunice, looking about her, after the infant was safely tucked away in her cot. “Doesn’t it look as if a cyclone had struck it? It’s more mussed up than the nursery ever gets with all three children there.”
“We’ll put it in order to-morrow, for it’s Saturday, and we’ll have plenty of time,” said Cricket, gathering up the baby’s things with a sweep of her arm, and putting them on a chair. “Come on down-stairs again. Doesn’t it seem grown-up and motherly just to turn down the gas and go down and leave the baby asleep? Won’t mamma be surprised when she comes home?”
“We must listen to see if she cries,” said Eunice, beginning to feel the responsibility of a family.
The children went down-stairs again, to the back parlour, where Marjorie was deep in to-morrow’s trigonometry. They each took a book and pretended to read, but each found herself starting up at every sound, and asking each other if that was the baby’s voice. A dozen times Eunice tiptoed to the front hall and stood listening at the foot of the stairs, with a queer feeling of the necessity of keeping very quiet, although she certainly had never felt that necessity with the twins or her small brother. A dozen times Cricket started up, fancying she heard a little wail from above.