“Hush,” she said. “I think I hear the children.”
IX
They came in, a pathetic little procession, three golden-haired couples, holding one another’s hands.
First, Arty and Emmy, then Catty and Baby, then Willie and Dick, all solemn and shy. Baby turned his back on the strange aunt and burrowed into his mother’s lap. They were all silent but Dick. Dick wanted to know if his Auntie liked birfdays, and if people gave her fings on her birfday—pausing to simulate a delicate irrelevance before he announced that his birfday was to-morrow.
“Dickie, dear,” said his mother, nervously, “we don’t talk about our birthdays before they’ve come.”
She could not bear Susie to be able to say that one of her children had given so gross a hint.
The children pressed round her, and her hands were soon at their proud and anxious work: coaxing stray curls into their place; proving the strength of the little arms; slipping a sock, to show the marbled rose of the round limbs.
“Just feel Emmy’s legs. She’s as firm as firm. And look at Baby, how beautifully he’s made. They’re all healthy. There isn’t an unsweet, unsound spot in one of them.”
“‘There isn’t an unsweet, unsound spot in one of them’”