Emmy's curiosity was excited. She sat on the fender seat and bent forward, her hands on her knees, in a pretty girlish attitude and fixed her forget-me-not eyes on him.
"Tell me all about it."
He obeyed and expounded Sypher's quixotism in his roundabout fashion. He concluded by showing her how it had been done for Zora's sake.
Emmy made a little gesture of impatience.
"Zora!" she exclaimed jealously. "It's always Zora. To see how you men go on, one would think there was no other woman in the world. Every one does crazy things for her, and she looks on calmly and never does a hand's turn for anybody. Clem Sypher's a jolly sight too good for her."
Septimus looked pained at the disparagement of his goddess. Emmy sprang to her feet and put her finger-tips on his shoulders.
"Forgive me, dear. Women are cats—I've often told you—and love to scratch even those they're fond of. Sometimes the more they love them the harder they scratch. But I won't scratch you any more. Indeed I won't."
The sound of the latch-key was heard in the front door.
"There's Madame Bolivard," she cried. "I must see what miracle of loaves and fishes she has performed. Do mind baby till I come back."
She danced out of the room, and Septimus sat on a straight-backed chair beside the bassinette. The baby—he was a rather delicate child considerably undergrown for his age, but a placid, uncomplaining little mortal—looked at Septimus out of his blue and white china eyes and contorted his india-rubber features into a muddle indicative of pleasure, and Septimus smiled cordially at the baby.