“Oh, yes, VERY,” answered Zoie, sarcastically.
Shutting his lips tight and glancing at Zoie with a determined effort at self restraint, Jimmy rose from the couch and started toward the door.
“If you women are done with me,” he said, “I'll clear out.”
“Clear out?” exclaimed Alfred, rising quickly and placing himself between his old friend and the door. “What a chance,” and he laughed boisterously. “You're not going to get out of my sight this night,” he declared. “I'm just beginning to appreciate all you've done for me.”
“So am I,” assented Jimmy, and unconsciously his hand sought the spot where his dinner should have been, but Alfred was not to be resisted.
“A man needs someone around,” he declared, “when he's going through a thing like this. I need all of you, all of you,” and with his eyes he embraced the weary circle of faces about him. “I feel as though I could go out of my head,” he explained and with that he began tucking the three small mites in the pink and white crib designed for but one.
Zoie regarded him with a bored expression'
“You act as though you WERE out of your head,” she commented, but Alfred did not heed her. He was now engaged in the unhoped for bliss of singing three babies to sleep with one lullaby.
The other occupants of the room were just beginning to relax and to show some resemblance to their natural selves, when their features were again simultaneously frozen by a ring at the outside door.