“I had heard something about it,” he said, and his voice rang out cheerily. “I suppose, to be honest, that is why I came around to-day and why I waited; I wanted to know. Wish you all sorts of luck, Miss Dallas, and whatever good comes to you won’t be luck, you know, after all! Congratulations, Mr. Latham! You surely do deserve the best thing in the world. I know what it is, too, though I don’t use your label on it: she’s Miss Dallas, not Anne to me, but there’s only one best thing, anyway.”
“What a trump you are, Kit Carrington!” cried Richard, jumping up and seizing Kit’s hands delightedly. “Why, you’re a poet yourself! That had the ring of imagination and beauty! Sit down. You’re here to lunch, you know.”
“Sorry, but I’m not, thanks,” said Kit; he could not wait to escape. “I’m on my way to Paul’s, Antony Paul’s. Miss Abercrombie bought a white Angora kitten for little Anne to play with while she’s convalescing. I’m going to find out when it won’t be too exciting for her to have it. Good-bye. Thanks for telling me. I don’t wonder you made a big thing of the play, Mr. Latham. Good-bye, Miss Dallas.”
Kit hastened out of the door, thankful to get into the air, yet tortured in leaving Anne with her betrothed.
If he could have seen how gently Richard touched her hair and let her take the low Greek stool on which she sat to read to him; how tight he clasped his hands lest he forget and draw her to him where he hungered to have her, Kit would have been a little consoled.
Richard knew that Anne shrank from a caress. He loved her for it; it seemed to him part of that rare quality of soul for which he adored her.
It was too soon, he was still too new to the wonder of the happiness that had fallen upon him when he was schooling himself to do without it, to miss in Anne the warmth that would have glowed in her had she loved Richard as he loved her. Thus far Richard was content, and waited as a worshipper to become a lover.
Kit walked fast to the Berkleys’; he had decided to go there first. Very likely Joan was at her mother’s, admiring little Anne’s progress.
He found that he had been right. The first thing that he saw when he was admitted was the baby, standing beside a chair, her rings of hair exceedingly up-standing and tousled, waving one hand lightly, proudly, to show that she was balancing with but one little fist on the chair seat, yet that she did not disdain to salute a world of her inferiors. The inferiors present—Mrs. Berkley and Joan—made no claim to equality. With a delight that surpassed the baby’s, as if countless millions of human beings had not once stood alone for the first time, they waved their hands at Barbara in return, making sounds as rapturously inarticulate as hers. It ended in Joan’s swooping down on her, snatching her up, burying her face in Barbara’s tiny mound of a stomach and swaying her up and down, till baby and mother were gasping.
“Oh, Kit, forgive us, dear!” cried Mrs. Berkley. “You saw how Barbara stood? Isn’t it wonderful, the beginning of living? Think how far those little feet will carry her through the world and beyond the world! Anne is gaining every hour, thank you.”