The howl that Billy gave in the first pang of that disappointment was certainly out of place in a sick-room. Everard, with one glance at the figure on the sofa, flinging itself into a sitting posture, and gazing at him in an outraged frenzy, caught his boy in his arms and fled with him upstairs.
"My's mummy! My's mummy! Billy wants my's mummy!" the child screamed.
His mummy was sitting over the fire in her own room, and her husband, bursting in, deposited Billy on her lap. The sobs died away against her breast, but Everard went down on his knees and smoothed and patted the beloved little head, and talked the foolish language of consolation his fatherhood had taught him.
"Ugly lady!" the child cried, in his broken voice. "Not Billy's mummy—ugly lady!"
"Billy's is a pretty mummy, isn't she, darling?" the man tenderly said.
"Billy's mummy loves her precious boy," Lucilla murmured.
"'Oves daddy, too," the child sobbed, feeling the father's touch.
She smiled upon the kneeling young man. "Loves dear daddy, too," she said.
It had been only a foolish flirtation—just the snatching at something to fill his empty days. Everard Barett's heart had been his wife's all along. He knew it for a certainty, looking at the woman and her child together, kneeling before them, with a sudden conviction of his own unworthiness, and folly, and absurdity.
"We all love each other, little man," he said. "If we three stick together, we're all right, Boy Billy—we're all right, Luce."