"Ye-s."
Hardly had he left the room when Alma came sweeping into it, full of I her warmest and insincerest congratulations.
"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue. "Wasn't I right in sending for the doctor? Such news, too! Oh, happy, happy you! But I must not keep you now, dearest. You'll be just crazy to write to your husband and tell him all about it."
Alma's mother was the next to visit me. The comfortable old soul, redolent of perfume and glittering with diamonds, began by congratulating herself on her perspicacity.
"I knew it," she said. "When I saw as how you were so and so, I said to Alma as I was sure you were that way. 'Impossible,' said Alma, but it's us married women to know, isn't it?"
After that, and some homely counsel out of her own experience—to take my breakfast in bed in future, avoiding tea, &c.,—she told me how fortunate I was to have Alma in the house at such a moment.
"The doctor says you're to be kept bright and cheerful, and she's such a happy heart, is Alma. So crazy about you too! You wouldn't believe it, but she's actually talking of staying with you until the December sailing, at all events."
The prospect of having Alma two months longer, to probe my secret soul as with a red-hot iron, seemed enough to destroy me, but my martyrdom had only begun.
Next day, Aunt Bridget came, and the bright glitter of the usually cold grey eyes behind her gold-rimmed spectacles told me at a glance that her visit was not an unselfish one.
"There now," she said, "you've got to thank me for this. Didn't I give you good advice when I told you to be a little blind? It's the only way with husbands. When Conrad came home with the news I said, 'Betsy, I must get away to the poor girl straight.' To be sure I had enough on my hands already, but I couldn't leave you to strangers, could I?"