"What do you think of that for noise?" said Al, not without pride. "She's like me, all right. When I'm hungry, there's hell to pay if I'm not fed quick. Here,"—he bent down over Claribel,—"you might as well have dinner now, and stop the row."
Not ungently, he placed the squirming mass in the baptismal dress beside the girl on the bed. With the instinct of ages, the baby stopped wailing and opened her mouth.
"The little cuss!" cried Al, delighted. "Ain't that me all over? Little angel-face the minute I get to the table!"
Unresisting now, Claribel let Rose uncover her firm white breast. The mother's arm, passively extended by Rose to receive the small body, contracted around it unconsciously.
She turned and looked long at the nuzzling, eager mouth, at the red hand lying trustfully open on her breast, at the wrinkled face, the indeterminate nose, the throbbing fontanelle where the little life was already beating so hard.
"A girl, Rose!" she said. "My God, what am I going to do with her?"
Rose was not listening. The Junior Medical's turn had come at last. Downstairs in the chapel, he was standing by the organ, his head thrown back, his heavy brown hair (which would never stay parted without the persuasion of brilliantine) bristling with earnestness.
"O'er all the way, green palms and blossoms gay,"
he sang, and his clear tenor came welling up the staircase to Liz, and past her to the ward, and to the group behind the screen.
"Are strewn this day in festal preparation,
Where Jesus comes to wipe our tears away—
E'en now the throng to welcome Him prepare."