“Would you really like to see them?” asked Marjorie, now thoroughly at ease with her guest.
“I can’t tell you how much.”
“Then, of course, you may!”
With an unconsciously coquettish gesture, she laid her finger on her lips and led the way up the creaking stairs. Her thoughts were of the children. Had she been careful to wash all the jam from Baby’s rosebud mouth? Althea, she remembered, had pulled the button off her Teddies and she had found it necessary to resort to the ubiquitous safety pin. And Sylvester—well, there was no prophesying what might have happened to Sylvester since she heard his “Now-I-lay-me,” and kissed him.
The thoughts of Mr. Sullivan, on the other hand, were concerned with almost everything but the children. He was wondering why that door at the foot of the stairs did not open and a voice ask what the devil he was doing, prowling through the house. He was trying to decide whether Marjorie had advised her husband of his coming and he was being deliberately ignored, or whether Dilling habitually shrouded himself with aloofness, and indifference to the affairs of the home and the personnel of his wife’s callers.
At the landing, Marjorie turned to whisper.
“Please don’t look at the room. It’s so hard to be tidy with babies, you know.”
Mr. Sullivan hung yearningly over the cots where Althea and Sylvester were sleeping. He did it very well, and Marjorie was delighted.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, and he indicated that he found a strong resemblance to her.
Beside the baby’s little crib he was overcome with emotion, and Marjorie’s heart went out to him as he groped hastily for his handkerchief and passed it across his eyes. “The cherub,” he whispered, “the exquisite little flower. She has her father’s cast of features, but—” transferring his expression of adoration to the face nearer his “—but I’ll wager she has her mother’s eyes!”