The look of authority and confident power on Louis’ face changed to incredulity, doubt, and blank hopelessness. His hand fell from Freddy’s shoulder—Freddy, who was already in his mother’s arms—and he began to unfasten the shawl draped about him.
“It’s no use,” he said quietly, his manner recalling vividly to the looker-on in the next room Karl Metzerott’s stern, self-contained grief at the bedside of his dying wife,—“It’s no use; I don’t want to be the Christ any more!”
“Den I’ll be bad,” cried Pinkie; and, suddenly lapsing into one of her naughtiest fits, she threw herself on the floor and screamed in a manner that Louis’ composure was not proof against; the tears rose to his eyes and his breast heaved.
“I think I’ll go home now,” he said with quivering lip.
“No, no, don’t ye now, alanna,” said nurse hastily, in the intervals of picking up Pinkie—who made herself very stiff indeed—from the floor, and assuring her that she should be sent up to the nursery for the rest of the day, if she cried and made her poor uncle ill again. “Don’t go yet, Louis astore, Miss Pinkie’ll never be good without ye. Stop yer cryin’, all of yez, and I’ll tell ye somethin’ now.”
“A story?” asked Pinkie, breaking off a roar in the middle, and speaking in a composed and cheerful tone.
“Not a story, darlint, but”—as Pinkie picked up her roar at the very point where she had dropped it, “somethin’ nice, very nice, that’ll make Louis play with you and Master Freddy again.”
Freddy, at this, raised his head from his mother’s shoulder, Louis dried his eyes and drew near, and Pinkie condescended to put aside her intended “badness,” pending further developments.
Alice stood erect, very white and still.
“I will leave them all to you, nurse,” she said, “though it is bitter to feel that any one but his mother can comfort my boy. But if you can make them happy again, do so; I cannot; one must say what one really believes to children, and I do not believe that—any one—could have cured Freddy any better than Louis did.”