“Here, take ’em,” said Mrs. George; “they’re for you, and they’ve been that troublesome! I’ve done nothing but look after them all the voyage. I suppose you’re Winnie,” she added, pausing with a momentary doubt.
“I hope you are not very tired,” Winifred said, with that imbecility which extreme surprise and confusion gives. She took the cage, which was heavy, and set it on a table. “And George—where is George?” she said.
“Oh, George is coming fast enough; he’s in the first fly with the children. But you don’t look at what I’ve brought you. They’re the true love-birds, the prettiest things in the world. I brought them all the way myself. I trusted them to nobody. George said you would think a deal of them.”
“So I shall—when I have time to think. It was very kind,” said Winnie. “Oh, George!” She ran down to meet him as he stepped out with a child on his arm.
George was not fat, like his wife, but careworn and spare.
“How do you do, Winnie?” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “Would you mind taking the baby till I get Georgie and the things out of the fly?”
The baby was a fat baby, and like his mother. He gazed at her with a placid aspect, and did not cry. There was something ludicrous in the situation, which Winifred faintly perceived, though everything was so serious. George was not like the long-lost brother of romance. He had shaken hands with her as if he had parted from her yesterday. He scarcely cast a glance at the house to which he was coming back, but turned quickly to the fly, and lifted out first a little fat boy of three, then parcel after parcel, with a slightly anxious but quite business-like demeanour.
“The maid and the boxes can go round to the other door,” he said, paying serious attention to every detail. “I suppose I can leave these things to be brought upstairs, Winnie? Now, Georgie, come along. There’s mamma waiting.” He did not offer to take the baby, which was a serious weight upon Winifred’s slight shoulder, but looked with a certain grave gratification at his progeny. “He is quite good with you,” he said, with pleased surprise. There was nothing in the fact of his return home that affected George so much. “Look at baby, how good he is with Winnie! I told you the children would take to her directly.”
“Well, I suppose it’s natural your sister should look to you first,” said the wife; “but I’ve taken a great deal of trouble bringing the birds to her, and she hasn’t given them hardly a glance.”
“It was very kind,” said Winnie; “but the children must come first. This is the way; don’t you remember, George? Bring your wife here.”