“There is a bottle of alcohol,” interpolated Mrs. Nichols.
“I’m so sorry, but I just tipped it over accidentally. Would you please send one of the maids to sweep up the broken glass? Thank you.”
The vision of the pretty face supported Mr. Nichols but insubstantially while he waited half an hour in the drug-store in contemplation of a deserted soda fountain, fly-specked packages of brown headache cure, a white and bony array of tooth-brushes, and some open boxes of flabby cigars in a glass case under an electric lighter. A suburban drug-store is not exactly an enlivening spot, and he was to become fatally well acquainted with it in the next few days.
To-night he went up and looked at the baby on his return; she was asleep, with cheeks flushed to a beautiful rose. She was breathing very hard, but still she slept, with her head thrown back, and the soft rings of hair spread out over the pillow; the curves of the little round body were carved out in the white bedclothes. The light in the room was shaded, and the nurse sat by the table under it, writing out her official report with a gold pencil held in her taper fingers; but his wife sat and watched the child. A sudden ache invaded the man’s heart.
“Is she all right?” he whispered.
His wife nodded. “Oh, yes. Doesn’t she look darling?”
But Mr. Nichols did not answer. The nurse came forward and smoothed little Quintilia’s pillow professionally.
“She seems to take an interest,” he whispered to his wife as they left the room. He felt the tenderness which a good man has for a young girl who has to earn her own living; she is somewhat on the same plane as himself, and it is a state of being of which he appreciates the difficulties. He realized that his wife’s silence was distinctly unsympathetic.
The children were very noisy that evening, without their mother’s presence, in the hour allotted them before bedtime. The youngest, Loulou, who was next to the baby, was seven years old—a stubby, chubby, black-haired child, with that genius for saying the wrong thing in the wrong place which is a mother’s woe. As she climbed on her father’s knee to-night she kept saying:
“Quintilia’s sick, father. Quintilia’s sick! Do you think she’ll be worse, to-morrow, father?” she grinned at him pleasantly, showing a mouth with three front teeth missing.