"Will he wake if I kiss him?" she pleaded.
The girl smiled doubtfully. "Maybe," she said.
She was equally indifferent to the baby and to Margaret. Her wistful eyes wandered eagerly down the street, watching each sidewalk, and the glow in her cheeks and eyes seemed to kindle and waver momently.
Margaret did not kiss the baby. She only bent her head close over his, close enough to feel his warm, quick breathing, to catch the rhythm of his palpitating little life.
When she came back to her porch, after the girl had gone on, Margaret saw that Jean's caller had come.
The young man sat beside Jean. His head was bare, his black hair brushed stiffly up from his forehead pompadour-fashion, his new spring suit palpably in its original creases. He and Jean talked eagerly, sometimes with shouts of young laughter, at which Margaret smiled sympathetically; sometimes with swift, earnest interchange; sometimes with lazy, contented intervals of silence. Occasionally he put out his hand to pat or tease the kitten which lay in Jean's lap. She defended it. Whenever their fingers chanced to touch they started consciously apart—covertly to tempt the chance again.
Two little girls came skipping down the street, their white dresses tossed about their knees. Their loose hair, of the dusky fairness of brunette children, tossed about their shoulders and an immense white ribbon bow quivered on the top of each little bare head. Their dress and their dancing run gave them the look and the wavering allure of butterflies.
They were on Jean's side of the street. They fluttered past the house unnoticed by the two on the porch, who were in the midst of an especially interesting quarrel about the kitten. The little girls passed over the crossing with traces of conscientious care for their white slippers, and came up on Margaret's side. Opposite her they paused in consultation.
"Won't you come in," she called to them, "and talk to me a minute?"
The two advanced hesitatingly and stood before her at a little distance on the young grass in attitudes clearly tentative. They were shy little misses, and had not lived long on that street.