Presently Kate went out. Peter sat by the window and looked up towards the park. He could catch a glimpse of it by leaning out. There was a moon. A wind whipped through the trees and they were swaying back and then rushing forward again whenever the gusts gave them an opening. That was a sort of dance. He turned away from the window. There was nothing in the room to remind him of Maria except the grand piano. He would get rid of that. His mind began to lose its ache. He could accept the fact that Maria had gone. He would remember her now always as he had seen her that first night standing still in the centre of the stage just before she began to dance. The sight of Maria washing a baby would have been queer. It was all right for nurses and old Irish women and sporting writers to mess around with babies and soap and rubber-tipped milk bottles. Somehow or other he was glad he had never seen the greatest dancer in all the world with a mouth full of safety pins.
CHAPTER VI
Miss Haine seemed somewhat surprised when Peter arrived at the hospital alone the next morning. "You're not going to carry him back yourself?" she said.
"Why not?"
"Have you ever held a baby?"
Peter thought back. "Not such a little one," he admitted.
"Well then, watch me," she said. "See, take him like this. If you don't he's sure to cry."
"But he's crying now," protested Peter.
"That's for some other reason. It isn't because I'm holding him wrong. All little babies cry a good deal at first. It's good for them. Any time a small baby doesn't cry a certain number of hours a day there's something wrong. You see he isn't big enough to walk, or crawl, or even roll around much and crying is the way he gets his exercise. He's getting air into his little lungs now."
"There isn't anything to be done about it?" Peter wanted to know.