‘Laura,’ he said, ‘I am worrying about baby.’
‘Why, Wilfrid?’ she answered gently.
‘Oh, it may be a mere instinctive anxiety, some secret misgiving, well founded but quite inexplicable and therefore to be sneered at by friend Charles here—who knows not yet the subtleties of a flesh-and-blood tie—as mere sentiment.’
‘But why allow a fancy to worry you, Wilfrid?’ said I.
‘I fear it is no fancy,’ he answered quickly.
‘I told Miss Jennings,’ said I, ‘that you have been vexed and upset by what you interpreted into a warning.’
‘Did it particularly refer to baby?’ she asked.
‘Wholly,’ he responded gloomily.
‘But confound it all, Wilfrid,’ cried I somewhat impatiently, ‘won’t you put this miserable vision into words? What form did it take? A warning! If you choose to view things asquint they’re full of warnings. Consider the superstitions which flourish; the signs of luck and of ill-luck; the meaning of the stumble on the threshold, the capsized salt-cellar, and the rest of the inventions of the wicked old hags who ride a cock-horse on broomsticks. Why,’ I cried, talking vehemently with the idea of breaking through the thickness upon his mind, though it was no better than elbowing a fog, ‘I protest, Wilfrid, I would rather swing at your lower-yardarm and be cut down after a reasonable time to plomb the deep peace of the green silence beneath our keel, than live in a torment of apprehension of shadows, and convert life into a huge mustard poultice to adjust to my quivering anatomy staggering onwards to the grave!’
He surveyed me with a lack-lustre eye whilst he listened.