Peter must have gone to sleep eventually on the sofa in the reception room of Dr. Clay's hospital. It was almost dark when he woke. He had been dreaming hard. In the dream some vague figure, forgotten by the time he awoke, presented him with a small lion cub as a pet. Throughout the dream Peter worried about the lion cub. The apartment house in which he lived had a strict rule against dogs. The janitor did not actually come into the dream, but much of Peter's sleeping consciousness was concerned with planning arguments for that official. "But it isn't a dog," Peter was prepared to say, "it's a lion. Your rules don't say anything about lions. Anyhow it's only a little lion." There had been a lion cub in Battling Nelson's camp and Peter had often watched the fighter fool around with it and slap the animal when it tried to nip him. Nelson had a trick of rubbing the rough stubble of his beard against the lion's nose. Peter hated that.
Disentangling himself from his dream he decided that his nightmare had been an echo he remembered from Goldfield. It took him several minutes to get himself back from the Nevada fight to the hospital in New York. While he slept he had forgotten that Maria had run away and that his son was in a room upstairs. He was about to skirmish out in search of one of the nurses when Dr. Clay came into the room.
"Feeling any better?" asked the doctor.
"I feel all right. I'm all ready to take the baby now."
"You don't need to be in any hurry about that, Mr. Neale. Better let him stay till tomorrow. It's after six now. Suppose we go up and watch the little fellow get bathed. I asked Miss Haine to postpone that so you could see him."
Peter realized that his presence at the bath seemed to be obligatory in the mind of the doctor. He went up the stairs to the same room which he had visited the fortnight before when he rushed away from the poker game. There could be no possible question about finding the right door for the hall was filled with loud howling.
"They never like it," said Dr. Clay.
"Is there any other reason for doing it?" asked Peter, but the physician made no answer.
The baby was propped up against one end of the tub rubbing at his eyes and Miss Haine was sloshing his chest with water from a sponge.
She looked up and said, "He's just fine, Mr. Neale. I'm not really hurting him."