"Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a
child can eat."
My wife's hand paused, in the act of taking the stick, and returned
itself to her lap. She bridled perceptibly, and said:
"Hubby, you know better than that. You know you do. Doctors all say
that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys."
"Ah--I was under a misapprehension. I did not know that the child's
kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had
recommended--"
"Who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected?"
"My love, you intimated it."
"The idea! I never intimated anything of the kind."
"Why, my dear, it hasn't been two minutes since you said--"
"Bother what I said! I don't care what I did say. There isn't any harm
in the child's chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know
it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now!"
"Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will
go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child
of mine shall want while I--"
"Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body
can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to
arguing and arguing and arguing till you don't know what you are talking
about, and you never do."
"Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your
last remark which--"
However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had
taken the child with her. That night at dinner she confronted me with a
face a white as a sheet:
"Oh, Mortimer, there's another! Little Georgi Gordon is taken."
"Membranous croup?"
"Membranous croup."
"Is there any hope for him?"
"None in the wide world. Oh, what is to be come of us!"
By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the
customary prayer at the mother's knee. In the midst of "Now I lay me
down to sleep," she gave a slight cough! My wife fell back like one
stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with
the activities which terror inspires.
She commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our
bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with
her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot-bed was put
up in my wife's dressing room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams
said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to
have the symptoms in the night--and she blanched again, poor thing.
We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed
for ourselves in a room adjoining.
Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it
from Penelope? This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the
tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough
to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and well-nigh
pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry.
We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow the nurse, and
Mrs. McWilliams said the nurse's experience would be an inestimable help.
So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a
great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest
again.
Mrs. McWilliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on
there. She was back in a moment with a new dread. She said:
"What can make Baby sleep so?"