CHAPTER XVIII
Two days later found Norma happily seated beside the big bed she and Rose had shared less than two years ago, where Rose now lay, with the snuffling and mouthing baby, rolled deep in flannels, beside her. Rose had come home to her mother, for the great event, and Mrs. Sheridan was exulting in the care of them both. Just now she was in the kitchen, and the two girls were alone together, Norma a little awed and a little ashamed of the emotion that Rose's pale and rapt and radiant face gave her; Rose secretly pitying, from her height, the woman who was not yet a mother.
"And young Mrs. Liggett was terribly disappointed that her baby was a girl," Rose marvelled. "I didn't care one bit! Only Harry is glad it's a boy."
"Well, Leslie was sure that hers was going to be a boy," Norma said, "and I wish you could have heard Aunt Annie deciding that the Melroses usually had sons——"
"She'll have a boy next," Rose suggested.
Norma glanced at her polished finger-tip, adjusted the woolly tan bag she carried.
"She says never again!" she remarked, airily. Rose's clear forehead clouded faintly, and Norma hastened to apologize. "Well, my dear, that's what she said," she remarked, laughingly, with quick fingers on Rose's hand.
"It's sad that Mrs. Chris Liggett didn't have just one, before her accident. It would make such a difference in her life," Rose mused, with her eyes fixed thoughtfully on Norma's face. There was something about Norma to-day that she did not understand.