"Oysters?" asked William. Susan hesitated.
"This doesn't come out of my expenses," she stipulated. "I'm hard-up this week!"
"Oh, no--no! This is up to me," Billy said. So they went in to watch the oyster-man fry them two hot little panfuls, and sat over the coarse little table-cloth for a long half-hour, contentedly eating and talking. Fortified, they walked home, Susan so eager to interrogate Big Mary about the children that she reached the orderly kitchen quite breathless.
Not a sound out of any of them was Big Mary's satisfactory report. Still their mother ran upstairs. Children had been known to die while parents and guardians supposed them to be asleep.
However the young Olivers were slumbering safely, and were wide-awake in a flash, the boys clamoring for drinks, from the next room, Josephine wide-eyed and dewy, through the bars of her crib. Susan sat down with the baby, while Billy opened windows, wound the alarm clock, and quieted his sons.
A full half-hour passed before everything was quiet. Susan found herself lying wakeful in the dark. Presently she said:
"Billy?"
"What is it?" he asked, roused instantly.
"Why, I saw something funny in the London 'News' to-night," Susan began. She repeated the paragraph. Billy speculated upon it interestedly.
"Sure, he's probably gone back to his wife," said Billy. "Circumstances influence us all, you know."