Behind all their backs Anthony glanced at his wife, affection and amusement in his face. She read the look and smiled back. It was no part of their plan to let the boy grow up alone. And as a mother she seemed to him far more beautiful than she had ever been.
“We are going to have a little paper with nursery-rhyme pictures all over it,” explained Juliet. “There are all sorts of softly harmonising colours in it. And just a matting on the floor with a rug to play on, his white crib, and some gay little curtains at the windows.”
“Have you made the partition double-thick, old man?” asked Lockwood. “This den-nursery combination strikes me as a little dubious.”
“It’s no use explaining to a fiendish old bachelor,” said Anthony, leading the way out of the place, “that I’d think I was missing a good deal if I should get so far away that I couldn’t hear little Tony laugh—or cry. Julie, where’s the boy? May I bring him down?”
He disappeared upstairs, whence sounds of hilarity were at once heard. Presently he reappeared on the stairs, bearing aloft upon his shoulder a rosy cherub of a baby, smiling and waving a chubby fist at the company. The beauty in his face was an exquisite mixture of that belonging to both father and mother. Anthony and his son together made a picture worth seeing.
Once more Wayne Carey smothered a sigh. But Judith hardened her heart. Since Baby Anthony had come Wayne had been difficult to manage.
Lockwood stayed after the others had gone. Sitting smoking before the fire with Anthony after Juliet had left them alone he brought the conversation around to a point which Anthony had expected.
“What do you hear of that man Huntington?” he asked, as indifferently as a man is ever able to ask a question which means much to him.
“Huntington? Why, the last was that he was improving a little, I believe. Arizona is a great place for that sort of thing.”