In Carlin's household there were now two children. The family still lived at the Judge's house; he had resisted firmly their attempts to leave him. He had turned over the whole house to them, reserving only two rooms on the ground floor for himself, and by now he had established himself as a member of the family. There was no more thought of breaking up the arrangement.
Carlin reached the house a little before the dinner hour. He found his eldest son carefully penned up on the porch, exercising his fat legs by rushes from side to side of his enclosure. In a chair beside the pen sat Mary, with the new baby at her breast. In spite of his hurry and preoccupation, Carlin smiled with pleasure at the group, stopped to hold out a finger to the tottering golden-haired boy, bent to kiss Mary, looking tenderly at her and the small blonde head against her bosom. The baby was but three weeks old. Mary had still about her the soft freshness and radiance of new motherhood. She was pale, her tall figure had not yet regained its firm lines, but her beauty was at its best. She had borne her children easily and happily. The fuller oval of her face, her soft heavy-lidded eyes and the new tenderness of her mouth, expressed the quiet joy of fulfilment, satisfaction.
"I must hurry back—can I have a bite to eat now?" Carlin asked softly, touching the baby's tiny hand outspread on Mary's breast.
"Dinner's nearly ready—I'll see. He's asleep."
"He's always asleep, when he isn't eating, and sometimes then," commented Carlin, smiling.
"So he ought to be," said Mary calmly.
She rose with caution, and carried the baby indoors, the frills of her muslin robe billowing about her. Both parents smiled as a wail from the deserted first-born followed them. They had a robust attitude toward the young James, and he was used to solitary communing with himself in his pen, but didn't like it. Mary carried the baby into the Judge's bedroom and laid him on the bachelor's bed. The Judge liked to have his room used in this way; it delighted him to find articles of infant's attire, or toys belonging to young James, in his quarters. He often said that he was getting all the feeling of being a family man without any of the bother.
Mary went into the kitchen to hurry the stolid Swedish cook, and Carlin ran lightly upstairs. When Mary came up to arrange her hair and dress, a moment later, she found him loading his army revolver, which he persisted in keeping in his top bureau drawer among his neckties.
"What's that for?" she asked quickly.