So they searched the tailbox and discovered many things—condensed milk, a carton of soda crackers, a quart bottle of olive oil, a feeding bottle, two “bluffers” with real ivory rings, and an assortment of baby clothes, many of them hemstitched and worked through long months of loving anticipation. The silence was pregnant of tears as The Worst Bad Man held up a wee woolen undershirt and two little stockings that might have been cut from the index fingers of a pair of woolen mittens. The trio surveyed them wonderingly before returning to the search of the tailbox.
“Ah, here we are, Tom, all fine and dandy,” announced The Wounded Bad Man, fishing up a book from the recesses of the tailbox. “'Doctor Meecham on Carin' for the Baby.' Let's see what the doc has to say about it.”
“Here's another,” said The Worst Bad Man, picking up another book and skimming through the first few pages, “but it don't say nothin' about——It's a Bible!”
He tossed it from him contemptuously, and The Youngest Bad Man, still under the spell of his youth and its resultant curiosity, retrieved the Bible. The Worst Bad Man, in the mean time, peered over the shoulder of The Wounded Bad Man.
“Turn to the part on bathin' the baby, Bill,” he commanded.
“Hum! Ah-hem! Let me see. All right, Tom.”
“Bathin' the Baby—Too much care cannot be exercised in performin' this most important part of the baby's toilette——”
“What in blazes is a toilette?” demanded The Worst Bad Man. The Wounded
Ban Man thereupon looked into the tailbox as if in search of it.
“I guess our baby ain't got no toilette in his war bags,” he replied sadly. “A toilette,” he continued, “is a little green tin bathtub about as long as my arm. Cost about dos pesos in any hardware store.”