"Say!" said Lizzie solicitously, "you look tired and a little pale. Would you feel for a cup of tea before you go?"
"No thank you, Lizzie."
Just here the door opened softly and Jennie and Sadie came into the room and went to the crib of the slumbering baby.
"Yes, he looks good," nodded Jennie approvingly. "You have got the room nice and warm, Lizzie. Just you keep the air off of him and he'll never get sick for you. There's a doctor's wife lives near us and you ought to see, Lizzie, the outlandish way she raises that baby! Why, any time you pass the house you can see the baby-coach out on the front porch standing, whether it's cold or warm! A doctor's wife, mind you, exposing her young baby like that! Till they're anyhow eight months old already, they shouldn't be taken into the air, winter or summer. If you didn't keep little Danny in the house all the time, you'd soon see how he'd ketch cold for you!"
Lizzie looked at Margaret solemnly, with an expression that might have been interpreted as a wink.
"He certainly is a fine boy!" murmured Sadie fondly, looking upon the little pink and white baby with a vague yearning in her old face.
"Yes," said Jennie pensively, "babies are such nice little things. I often think it's such a pity there ain't a more genteel way of getting them."
Lizzie nudged Margaret behind Jennie's back.
"It's a pity they have to grow up to be men," said Margaret.
As they all went downstairs, Lizzie held Margaret back for an instant to whisper to her: "I don't know what loosened up my tongue to-day, to say the things to you I did! Hiram would be cross if he knew how free I told you things."