William stared at her, speechless. The Medusa’s classic expression of horror was as nothing to William’s at that moment. Then he moistened his lips and spoke in a hoarse voice.
“Me?” he said. “Me? Me take a baby out in a pram?”
“Well, dear,” said his mother deprecatingly, “I know it’s your half holiday, but you’d be out of doors getting the fresh air, which is the great thing. It’s a nice baby and a nice pram and not heavy to push, and Mrs. Butler would be so grateful to you.”
“Yes, I should think she’d be that,” said William bitterly. “She’d have a right to be that if I took the baby out in a pram.”
“Now, William, I’m sure you’d like to help, and I’m sure you wouldn’t like your father to hear that you wouldn’t even do a little thing like that for poor Mrs. Butler. And she’s got such a headache.”
“A little thing like that!” repeated William out of the bitterness of his soul.
But the Fates were closing round him. He was aware that he would know no peace till he had done the horrible thing demanded of him. Sorrowfully and reluctantly he bowed to the inevitable.
“All right,” he muttered, “I’ll be down in a minute.”
He heard them fussing over the baby in the hall. Then he heard his elder brother’s voice.
“You surely don’t mean to say, mother,” Robert was saying with the crushing superiority of eighteen, “that you’re going to trust that child to—William.”