Mrs. Forge not answering (Mrs. Forge, in fact, living over the glories of that wonder-day with the lacklustre gone from her pin-point eyes and her pinched face softened, for the first time in years), Edith finally concluded:
“Say, Ma! Wonder how quick it’d be safe to ‘touch’ Nat for a couple o’ thousand—and stand any show o’ gettin’ it? Joe’s gettin’ awful restless lately with so many kids to support. And a couple thousand would give him a swell start in the express business. Nat oughta set him up. It’s his duty. After all, he can’t sneak outta the fact that I’m his sister!”
CHAPTER XX
HILL TOPS
I
Their baby was born the following August.
The day of its arrival, Nathan paced the cool, impersonal corridors of the maternity hospital like an animal crazed, obsessed with the necessity of getting relief by tearing something.
He had often smiled over the acclaimed nervousness and general distress of certain young fathers, awaiting the arrival of their first-born. He was not smiling now. Suppose the child should cost Madelaine her life? What youngster could ever compensate for the Woman Beautiful who from the first had made matrimony almost an idealist’s dream? If he lost Madelaine, he could understand how fathers could hate their offspring.
But there was to be no occasion for any such unnatural attitude. At twenty minutes past three o’clock, a nurse came down the elevator and accosted him with a cheery, knowing smile.
“Congratulations first, Mr. Forge,” she cried. “You have an eight-pound son. Everything’s perfectly normal and your wife’s doing lovely.”