“Oh! yes, it’s ex-ci-ting.... Ter-ri-bly exciting!” she moaned to the sands. “But how I wish it was over! I don’t want to distrust those about me. And maybe he thought he had a grain of right--though he was a spy!” The tired concession was breathed into the curve of a trembling elbow. “Cool--cool he was, anyhow--here and there! Oh-h! if only the cry of the children--the little children over in France--could come true, and it was: ‘Fini la Guerre!... Fini--forever--la Guerre!’ If Peace could come again!”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PEACE BABE
Peace had come again.
And in her shining bassinet Peace Europa breathed softly through a mouth like a damp red rose, waved a tiny arm feebly, uncurled the new-born hand, with its pearly nails, as if she would catch and hold to her baby breast--forever and a day--the new-born happiness that had come to earth with her.
Beside her in the wee hospital crib, sharing the soft blanket in which the welcoming nurse had wrapped her, slumbered another, her Heavenly Twin--the Babe of Peace.
So it seemed to nurses and doctors who stole near to look at her, lying all oiled and shiny!
“If ever a baby was born at the hour of fate, she was!” breathed the intern, the house-doctor, beaming through his glasses upon her. “And, by George! the mite seems to know it, too. Did you ever before see such a placid smile upon a new-born thing?”
“I never did,” replied the feminine superintendent of the Hospital. “I’m afraid I’ll have to keep out of the ‘baby-room,’--else I’ll break every rule--take her up now and again, to cuddle her, just for the sake of this won-der-ful hour in which she first saw--the--light.”
“Yes! and spoil her for her mother to take care of, afterwards--make her as nervous as a witch. I guess even my young sister--fifteen-year-old sister who’s a Camp Fire Girl and has taken a course in Baby Craft--would have more self-control than that,” rebuked the intern, but leniently, joy oozing through his glasses; for his dearest chum was at the front, that devastated front, in far-away France--and now there was a chance of seeing him again.