“In the morning you’ll both be very happy.”
“I hope so.”
“Why, Anthony, dear,” said the kindly little woman, “I never knew you to be so faint of heart.”
Anthony faced around again. “If my strength could do her any good I’d be a lion for her,” he said. “But when all I can do is to wait—and think what I’d do if——”
He was gone suddenly into the night. With a tender smile on her lips Mrs. Dingley went on upon the errand which had brought her downstairs. “It’s worth something to a woman to be able to make a man’s heart ache like that,” she said to herself with a little sigh. Anthony would not have understood, but even in this hour the older woman, in her wisdom, was envying Juliet.
Morning came at last, as mornings do. With the first streaks of the gray dawn Anthony heard a little, high-keyed, strange cry—new to his ears. He leaped up the stairs, four at a time, and paused, breathless, by the closed door of the blue-and-white room. After what seemed to him an interminable time Mrs. Dingley came out. At sight of Anthony her face broke into smiles, and at the same moment tears filled her eyes.
“It’s a splendid boy, Tony,” she said. “I meant to come to you the first minute, but I waited to be perfectly sure. He didn’t breathe well at first.”
But Anthony pushed this news aside impatiently. “Juliet?” he questioned eagerly.
“She’s all right, you poor man,” Mrs. Dingley assured him. “You shall see her presently, just for a minute. The first thing she said was, ‘Tell Tony.’ Go down now—I’ll call you soon.”
Anthony stole away downstairs to the outer door again. This time he ran out upon the porch and down the lawn and orchard, in the early half-light, to the willow path by the brook. He dashed along this path to its end and back again, as if he must in some way give expression to his relief from the tension of the night. But he was back and waiting impatiently long before he received his summons to his wife’s room.