“Very well, my child; I'll come up with you.”
Putting her into the cab in London, he asked:
“Have you still got your key of Bury Street? Good! Remember, Gyp—any time day or night—there it is for you.”
She had wired to Fiorsen from Mildenham that she was coming, and she reached home soon after three. He was not in, and what was evidently her telegram lay unopened in the hall. Tremulous with expectation, she ran up to the nursery. The pathetic sound of some small creature that cannot tell what is hurting it, or why, met her ears. She went in, disturbed, yet with the half-triumphant thought: 'Perhaps that's for me!'
Betty, very flushed, was rocking the cradle, and examining the baby's face with a perplexed frown. Seeing Gyp, she put her hand to her side, and gasped:
“Oh, be joyful! Oh, my dear! I AM glad. I can't do anything with baby since the morning. Whenever she wakes up, she cries like that. And till to-day she's been a little model. Hasn't she! There, there!”
Gyp took up the baby, whose black eyes fixed themselves on her mother in a momentary contentment; but, at the first movement, she began again her fretful plaint. Betty went on:
“She's been like that ever since this morning. Mr. Fiorsen's been in more than once, ma'am, and the fact is, baby don't like it. He stares at her so. But this morning I thought—well—I thought: 'You're her father. It's time she was getting used to you.' So I let them be a minute; and when I came back—I was only just across to the bathroom—he was comin' out lookin' quite fierce and white, and baby—oh, screamin'! And except for sleepin', she's hardly stopped cryin' since.”
Pressing the baby to her breast, Gyp sat very still, and queer thoughts went through her mind.
“How has he been, Betty?” she said.