“Oh, she will be over that now.”
“In two years? Why, certainly not. They will be just the same, only more so.”
Eveley began to experience a curious internal sinking. Eileen was too deliriously optimistic about those children. They were angel babies, of course, for Eileen said so, but Eveley remembered Nathalie and Dan, angels, too,—but how they shouted and tore through the house. And they were always exhibiting fresh cuts and bruises, and Dan had insisted on the confiscation of his curls at four years. If Billy was still wearing curls at seven, he needed a tonic for he was not regular.
“Eileen,” she began very gently, “you—you mustn’t expect too many dimples and curls. Children are angels,—but they are funny, too. They are always bleeding, you know, and—”
“Bleeding!” gasped Eileen. “Agnes never mentioned bleeding! Do they always do it?”
“Always. They are always getting themselves smashed and scratched, and blood runs all over them, and gets matted in their hair, and their hands are constitutionally dirty, and—they always have at least one finger totally and irrevocably smashed. Some times it is two fingers, and once in a while a whole hand, but the average is one finger.”
Eileen looked at her friend in a most professional manner.
“I do not know if you are trying to be insulting, or just amusing, but I saw those children. I was right there for three weeks only two years ago, and they were always clean, they had curls, and they were certainly not smashed or I should have noticed it.”
“They shout, too, Eileen,” Eveley went on wretchedly, determined to prepare Eileen for the shock that was sure to follow. “They—they just whoop. And—”
“If you can not be a little pleasanter, dear, suppose you go and wait for me in the car. I am too nervous. I simply can not stand it.”