“I haven’t told you!” was the reply.
8. I knew that I had only to wait for Claire to tell me the rest of the story. But her mind went off on another tack. “Sylvia’s going to have a baby,” she remarked, suddenly.
“That ought to please her husband,” I said.
“You can see him beginning to swell with paternal pride!—so Jack said. He sent for a bottle of some famous kind of champagne that he has, to celebrate the new ‘millionaire baby.’ (They used to call Douglas that, once upon a time.) Before they got through, they had made it triplets. Jack says Douglas is the one man in New York who can afford them.”
“Your friend Jack seems to be what they call a wag,” I commented.
“It isn’t everybody that Douglas will let carry on with him like that. He takes himself seriously, as a rule. And he expects to take the new baby seriously.”
“It generally binds a man tighter to his wife, don’t you think?”
I watched her closely, and saw her smile at my naiveté. “No,” she said, “I don’t. It leaves them restless. It’s a bore all round.”
I did not dispute her authority; she ought to know her husbands, I thought.
She was facing the mirror, putting up her hair; and in the midst of the operation she laughed. “All that evening, while we were having a jolly time at Jack Taylor’s, Larry was here waiting.”