Juliet’s father and Mrs. Dingley left on an early evening train, and only the three younger guests remained when Juliet came downstairs after putting her boy to bed. She set about gathering up the toys scattered over the floor, and Barnes helped her. In the midst of this labour, during which they all made merry with some of the more elaborate mechanical affairs, Juliet suddenly said “What’s that?” and went to the bottom of the stairs.
“Let me go,” offered Anthony. “He’s probably too excited to get to sleep easily after all this dissipation.—Hullo!—he’s crowing with the rooster yet.”
But Juliet went up, and he followed her, saying from the landing to his guests, “Excuse me for a little. I’ll get the boy quiet, and let his mother come down. I’ve a fine talent for that sort of thing. That rooster will have to be given some soothing syrup—he’s too lively a fowl.”
“I never saw a man fonder of his youngster than Tony,” Carey observed.
“The child is a particularly fine specimen,” the doctor said. “I think I never saw a more ideal development than he shows.”
He began to tell an incident in which little Tony had been involved, when he was interrupted.
“Barnes!”—called Anthony’s voice from the top of the stairs. “Come up here, please.”
There was something in the imperative quality of this summons which made the doctor run up the stairs, two at a time. Judith and Wayne listened. The rooster could still be heard crowing, faintly but distinctly.
“Perhaps he’s grown too excited over it,” Judith suggested. “They ought to take it away.”
Carey went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. There were rapid movements overhead. The doctor’s voice could be heard giving directions through which sounded the steady crowing of the toy. “Hold him so—now move him that way as I thump—now the other——”