Gerald bit his lip to avoid an ugly word: to anybody but his wife on this her first arrival in London, he would have flung it out.
"Have you brought no nursemaid, Winny?"
"Good gracious, no! How could I tell I might afford to bring one, Gerald? You know I had but one maid for everything, down there."
Hurrying them into a cab, Gerald went in search of the luggage, suppressing a groan, and glancing over his shoulder on all sides. Bundles done up in kitchen towels and pillowcases! If Gerald Yorke had never before offered up a prayer, he did then: that no ill-chance might have brought any of his fashionable friends to the station that unlucky afternoon.
"Drive through the obscurest streets," he said in the cabman's ear on his return, as he mentioned Hamish Channing's address. "Never mind taking a round; I'll pay you." And the man put his whip to the bridge of his nose, and gave a confidential nod in answer: for which Gerald could have knocked him down.
"And now, Winny, tell me how you came to do this mad thing," he said sternly, when he was seated with them.
For answer, Mrs. Yorke broke into a burst of sobs. It was coming, she thought. But Gerald had no mind for a scene there; and so held his tongue to a better opportunity. But the tears continued, and Gerald angrily ordered her not to be a child.
"You've never kissed one of us," sobbed Winny. "You've not as much as kissed baby."
"Would you have had me kiss you on the platform?" he angrily demanded. "Make a family embracing of it, for the benefit of the public! I'll kiss you when we get in. You are more ridiculous than ever, Winny."
The three little things, sitting opposite, were still as mice, looking shyly at him with their timid blue eyes. Gerald took one upon his knee for a moment and pressed its face to his own, fondly enough. Fortune was very unkind to him he thought, in not giving him a fine house for these children, and a thousand or two per annum to keep them on.