"Listen!" Bob raised a hand and nodded in the direction of the girls.
"They're discussing that very subject."
"Top milk, indeed!" Adoree was crying, indignantly. "Ours will have cream when they want it, and lots of it too."
"My dear! It will be fatal." Lorelei was horrified. "Use nothing but top milk and barley-water. Be sure to sterilize the bottles and soak the nipples in borax—"
"Say!" Campbell Pope flushed painfully and rose to his feet. "They're not talking ducks. Women haven't the least delicacy, have they? Let's go out and smoke."
One day, after Bob had acquired sufficient confidence in himself and in the baby to handle it without anxiety to the nurse, he begged permission to show it to the hallman down-stairs. He returned greatly elated, explaining that the attendant, who had some impossible number of babies of his own and might therefore be considered an authority, declared this one to be the finest he had ever beheld. Oddly enough, this praise delighted Bob out of all reason. He remained in a state of suppressed excitement all that day, and on the following afternoon he again kidnapped the child for a second exhibition. It seemed that the infant's fame spread rapidly, for soon the tenants of neighboring apartments began to clamor for a sight of it, and Bob was only too eager to gratify them. Every afternoon he took his son down-stairs with him, until finally Lorelei checked him as he was going out.
"Bob, dear," she said, with the faintest shadow of a smile. "I don't think it's good for him to go out so often. Why don't you ask your father and mother to come up?"
Wharton flushed, then he stammered, "I—what makes you—er—think—"
"Why, I guessed it the very first day." Lorelei's smile saddened. "They needn't see me, you know."
Bob laid the child back in its bed. "But that's just what they want. They want to see you, only I wouldn't let you be bothered. They're perfectly foolish over the kid; mother cries, and father—but just wait." He rushed out of the room, and in a few moments returned with his parents.
Hannibal Wharton was deeply embarrassed, but his wife went straight to Lorelei and, bending over her chair, placed a kiss upon her lips. "There," said she. "When you are stronger I'm going to apologize for the way we've treated you. We're old people. We're selfish and suspicious and unreasonable, but we're not entirely inhuman. You won't be too hard on us, will you?"