At the door his wife met them with a troubled and anxious face.
“Calamities?” asked Frank, desperately.
“O, calamities upon calamities! We've got a lost child in the kitchen,” answered Mrs. Sallie.
“O good heavens!” cried her husband. “Adieu, my dreams of repose, so desirable after the quantity of active enjoyment I've had! Well, where is the lost child?”
III.—THE EVENING
“Where is the lost child?” repeats Frank, desperately. “Where have you got him?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Why in the kitchen?”
“How's baby?” demands Mrs. Sallie, with the incoherent suddenness of her sex, and running halfway down the steps to meet the nurse. “Um, um, um-m-m-m,” sounds, which may stand for smothered kisses of rapture and thanksgiving that baby is not a lost child. “Has he been good, Lucy? Take him off and give him some cocoa, Mrs. O'Gonegal,” she adds in her business-like way, and with a little push to the combined nurse and baby, while Lucy answers, “O beautiful!” and from that moment, being warned through all her being by something in the other's tone, casts aside the matronly manner which she has worn during the day, and lapses into the comfortable irresponsibility of young-ladyhood.
“What kind of a time did you have?”