Anthony bent over his wife. “Little mother,” he whispered, with a kiss, and obediently went.
Across the hall he stood looking dazedly down at the round, warm bundle the nurse laid in his arms.
“My son,” he said; “how odd that sounds.”
Then he hastily gave the bundle back to the nurse and got away downstairs, wiping the perspiration from his brow.
“Never dreamed it was going to knock me over like this,” he was saying to himself. “I can’t look at her; I can’t look at him; I feel like a big boy who has seen a little fellow take his thrashing for him.”
And in this humble—albeit most sincerely thankful—frame of mind he absently drank his breakfast coffee, and never realised that in her confusion of spirit good Mary McKaim, who was here again in time of need, had brewed him instead a powerful cup of tea.
XX.—A Prior Claim
“Come up, come up—you’re just the people we want,” cried Anthony heartily from his own porch. “Thought you’d be getting out to see us some of these fine August nights. Sit down—Juliet will be out in a minute.”