“Take it,” he said, with enchanting masculine helplessness. Pelleas will not even let me carry my primroses up and down stairs, but merely because this was a baby he resigned his rights. I had almost forgotten how humble men are in such a presence.
I took the baby in my arms, and he settled down with that contented little gurgle which always attends a baby’s changing hands, most subtilely flattering the new nurse until the storm breaks afresh harder than before. This the storm did next, and I looked at Pelleas a little wildly. For whatever was to be done I must do.
“Go first,” said I firmly, “and open the kitchen door.”
I followed him down the stairs, one foot at a time, and when he opened the door the sight warmed my heart. The kitchen was cheery and brightly lighted, a hot fire was blazing in the range, and the teakettle was singing away to make the most miserable at peace. Sometime I shall write a letter to those who are of all men the bluest, and the substance of it will be: Go and put on the teakettle.
I sat by the fire while Pelleas, by devious ways of pantry and refrigerator, sought out the milk, and we were very merry over warming it, for it was a wonderful occasion. Pelleas spilled a great deal of milk on Nichola’s perfectly polished griddles—O, I could not have loved him if in such a pleasant experience his hands had been perfectly firm and indifferent. Nichola’s hands would have been quite firm. That brown old woman has no tremors and no tears. And just as Pelleas had filled the baby’s bottle, she appeared at the stair door.
“The babby’s mother,” she said, folding her arms, “says you’d know about mixin’ in the lime water an’ the milk sugar, an’ boilin’ the bottles up, an’ washin’ out the babby’s mouth with carbolic acid.”
“Nichola!” we gasped.
“That’s what she says,” Nichola maintained firmly, “some kind o’ acid. I think she says her Aunt Septy told her. She says I’s to tell you or the babby’d starve. The young leddy acts like a cluck-chicken.”
When she had gone back upstairs Pelleas and I looked in each other’s faces.
“I had forgotten,” I said weakly, “Pelleas, they boil everything now.”