"Hello!" he cried, stopping short. "I popped in early to-day. Matter of great importance to talk over with my heir. Wait a second, Anne. I'll be back—I say, what's the matter? You look posi-tive-ly as if you were on the point of bursting into grand opera. Going to sing?"
"I'm singing all over, Georgie,—all over, inside and out," she cried joyously.
"Gee whiz!" he gasped. "Has the baby begun to talk?"
CHAPTER XXV
She did not meet him again at Lutie's. Purposely, and with a cunning somewhat foreign to her sex, she took good care that he should not be there when she made her daily visits. She made it an object to telephone every day, ostensibly to inquire about Lutie's condition, and she never failed to ask what the doctor had said. In that way she knew that he had made his visit and had left the apartment. She would then drive up into Harlem and sit happily with her sister-in-law and the baby, whom she adored with a fervour that surprised not only herself but the mother, whose ideas concerning Anne were undergoing a rapid and enduring reformation.
She was shocked and not a little disillusioned one day, however, when Lutie, now able to sit up and chatter to her heart's content, remarked, with a puzzled frown on her pretty brow:
"Dr. Braden must be terribly rushed with work nowadays, Anne. For the last week he has been coming here at the most unearthly hour in the morning, and dashing away like a shot just as soon as he can. Good gracious, we're hardly awake when he gets here. Never later than eight o'clock."
Anne's temple came down in a heap. He wasn't playing the game at all as she had expected. He was avoiding her. She was dismayed for an instant, and then laughed outright quite frankly at her own disenchantment.