“He’s getting a great, big, hard back tooth, Molly, at eight months,” said his mother, casting aside the biscuit and wiping the exquisite, little velvet face. “Isn’t that early?”
“It seems so to me. I forget! Any fever?”
“Oh, no, but his blessed little mouth is so hot! Timmy’s asleep,” said Cassie anxiously. “But Molly, if you could stay to see him just a minute when he wakes! Could Merle—we have an extra bed in the little room right off the boys’ room, where the nurse slept. She couldn’t spend Christmas with the boys? That would be better than any present to us!”
She spoke as one hardly hoping, and Merle felt no hope whatever. But to the amazement of both, the handsome, resolute face softened, and the doctor merely said:
“Trot along to bed then, Merle, with your cousins. But mind you don’t make any noise. Remember Uncle Timmy is ill!”
Merle strangled her with a kiss. There was a murmur of children’s happy voices on the stairs; a messenger came back to ask if Tom’s nine-year-old pajamas or Rawley’s seven-year-old size would best suit the guest. Another messenger came discreetly down and hung a fourth stocking at the dining-room mantel, with the air of one both invisible and inaudible.
“He’s terrified,” said Cassie in an aside, with her good motherly smile; “he knows he has no business downstairs at this hour!”
Then Cassie’s baby fretted himself off in her arms, and the two women sat in the dim light, and talked and talked and talked.
“Cassie, we’ve an enormous turkey—I’ll send it over the first thing in the morning.”
“But, Molly, when Tim knows you’ve been here, he’ll not care about any turkey!”