Chris, taken by surprise, frowned.
"Why, yes, I suppose so," he admitted, unwillingly.
"Chris, did it ever occur to you that she might have had a child—by that fiend?"
Chris looked at his wife a moment, and his eyes widened, and his mouth twitched humorously.
"Oh, come now, Alice—come now!"
"You think it's folly!" she asked, eagerly.
"Worse!" he answered, briefly, his eyes smiling reproach.
Alice's whole tense body relaxed, and she stared at him with light dawning in her eyes.
"Well, probably it is," she said, very simply.
"Of course it is," Chris said. "Now, you are dead tired, dear, and you have let the thing mill about in your head until you can't see anything normally. I confess that I don't understand your mother's mysterious nervousness, but then I am free to say that I don't by any means always understand your mother! You remember the pearl episode, and the time that she had Annie and Hendrick cabling from Italy—because Hendrick Junior had a rash! And then there was Porter—a boy nineteen years old, and she actually had everyone guessing exactly what she felt toward him——"