A queer little dud with his black hair that stayed combed. No telling what he knew any of the time. He didn’t open his eyes so that anybody could catch him at it for several days, but the nurse never would have done raving over his black lashes. Finally Pidge heard the news—that the eyes weren’t black after all, as the hair and lashes would indicate, but a dense blue.
“He’s going to be a soldier—such a soldier!” the nurse exclaimed. “I know I’ll die when I have to leave him.”
Pidge’s lips worked without sound, and then a funny little twisted smile stayed there—that made Miss Claes love her as never before.
XXXVI
RUFE HURRIES HOME
RUFE MELTON came home to find life not the same. Matters had evolved while he was away about his country’s business, matters that didn’t please him now. He had rushed to Pidge. As the steamer approached New York, a novel and unforeseen eagerness awoke within to get to her, but she hadn’t put off her Arctics. Besides, off duty from her editorial job, there was an infant in her arms for the most part—a seven-months-old male infant with combed hair, that had looked into his face and begun to yell. Rufe took this as a personal affront. He had supposed it hers at first.
“Sometimes, I forget that it isn’t,” she had said.
Harrow Street furnished the statement and proof, however, that it was Fanny Gallup’s, who was dead.
“But why don’t you adopt the other two?” he asked.
“Miss Claes has found homes for Albert’s children,” Pidge said.
Rufe stood it for two days. “This can’t go on, Pan. I’ve got to get to work—no nerves to work in this racket, since I was gassed——”