“What’s the matter, Bess?” he asked sleepily.
She lifted her white head that she had laid against the window-pane. “O Stephen! did I wake you? I’m sorry. It’s nothing—go to sleep again.”
“People don’t get up out of bed in the middle of the night to go lean up against windows and stare out into the dark for nothing,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. “What’s wrong with you, Bess?”
“Stephen,” she said in a repressed voice, “in all the years that we’ve been married you’ve often heard me say how glad I am that I’ve never had a child.”
“Often, Bess.”
“How glad—how delighted I am,” she went on quietly, though he knew by her tones that she was trembling like a leaf, “that we have not had to launch another little child into this world of care and trouble; it’s such a sad world for children.”
“I know, I know,” he said, trying not to yawn as he listened to her.
“They’re such a worry when they’re growing up,” she continued sorrowfully; “they get ill, and you have to fuss over them in the daytime, and they call you out of your warm bed at night.”
“Of course they do,” he responded. “They’re always bleating like lambs after their parents.”