"Come up, come up--you're just the people we want," cried Anthony heartily
from his own porch. "Thought you'd be getting out to see us some of these
fine August nights. Sit down--Juliet will be out in a minute."
"Baby asleep?" asked Judith Carey, as she and Wayne settled comfortably
into two of the deep bamboo chairs with which the porch was furnished.
"To be sure he's asleep at this hour," Anthony assured her proudly; "been
asleep for two hours. Regular as a clock, that youngster. Nurse trained
him right at the beginning, and Juliet has kept it up. Four months old
now, and sleeps from six at night till four in the morning without waking.
How's that?"
"I suppose it's remarkable," agreed Wayne meekly, "but I don't know
anything about it. He might sleep twenty-three hours out of twenty-four--I
shouldn't understand whether to call him a prodigy or an idiot."
"Why, yes, you would," Judith interposed with spirit. "Think of that baby
on the floor above us. They're walking the floor half the night with
her."
"Girl babies may be different," Carey suggested diffidently, at which
Anthony shouted. "I don't care--all the girls I ever knew wanted to sit up
nights," Carey insisted with a feeble grin.
Juliet came out, welcoming her friends with the cordiality for which she
was famous. "It's so hot in town," she condoled with them. "You should get
out into our delicious air oftener. Somehow, with our breezes we don't
mind the heat."
"It's heaven here, anyhow," sighed Carey, stretching back in his chair
with a long breath. Judith looked sober.
"You say it's heaven," commented Anthony, staring hard at his friend, "and
you profess to admire everything we do, and eat, and say, but you continue
to pay good money every week for a lot of extremely dubious comforts--from
my point of view."
"It's one of the very best places in that part of the city," protested
Judith.
Anthony eyed her keenly. "Yes; if that's what you're paying for you've got
it, I admit. If it's a consolation to you to know that the address you
give when you go shopping is one that you're not ashamed of--why, you're
all right. But I reckon Juliet here doesn't blush when she orders things
sent home to the country."
"Oh, Juliet--" began Judith; "she doesn't need an address to make all the
salespeople pay her their most respectful attention. She----"
"I understand," said Anthony. "That sweetly imperious way of hers when she
shops--I remember it the first time I ever went shopping with her----"
Juliet gave him a laughing glance. "If I remember," she said, "it wasn't I
who did all the dictating on that historic expedition when we furnished
this house."
"We've got to go shopping again," Anthony informed them. "We're planning
to put a little wing on the house, opening from under the stairs in the
living-room, for a nursery and a den."
"Going to put the two together?" asked a new voice from the dimness of the
lawn.
"Oh--hullo, Roger Barnes, M.D., F.R.C.S.--come up. No, I think we'll have
a partition between. But I want a room below stairs for Tony, Junior, so
his mother won't wear herself out carrying him up and down. That youngster
weighs seventeen pounds and a fraction already."
"I was confident I'd get some statistics if I came out," said the doctor,
settling himself near Juliet--with a purpose, as she instantly recognised.
"It seemed to me I couldn't wait longer to learn how much he had gained
since I met Tony day before yesterday. It was seventeen without the
fraction then."
"That's right--guy me," returned Anthony comfortably. "I don't mind--I've
the boy."
* * * * *
"I want a talk with you," said the doctor softly to Juliet, as the others
fell to discussing the project of the enlarged house. "I've got to have
it, too--or go off my head."
Juliet nodded, understanding him. Presently she rose. "I have an errand to
do," she said. "Will you walk over to the Evanstons' with me, Roger?"
"Now, tell me," began the doctor the instant they were off, "is she going
to persist in this awful sacrifice?"
"Poor Rachel," breathed Juliet. "So many lovers--and so unhappy."
"Is she unhappy?" begged the doctor. "Is she? If I only were sure of
it----"
"What girl wouldn't be unhappy--to be making even one man out of two as
miserable as you?"
"But you know what I mean. Is she going to marry Huntington out of love as
well as pity--or only pity?"
"Roger"--Juliet stood still in the road, regarding him in the dim light
with kind eyes--"if I knew I wouldn't tell you. That's Rachel's secret.
But I don't know. She's as loyal as a magnet, and as reserved as--you
would want her to be if you were Mr. Huntington."
"She's everything she ought to be. I'm a dastard for saying it, but I
could forgive her for being disloyal enough to him to show me just a
corner of her heart. Even if she loves him it's what I called it--an awful
sacrifice--a man dying with consumption. If she doesn't--except as the
friend of her early girlhood, when she didn't know men or her own
heart--Juliet, it's impious."
"Roger, dear, keep hold of yourself," Juliet replied. "You're too strong
and fine to want to come between her and her own decision--if she has made
it."
"If you were a man," said he hotly, "would you let a woman marry
you--dying?"
"Yes," answered Juliet stoutly, "if she insisted."
"Women are capable of saying anything in an argument," he growled. "I say
it's outrageous to let her do it. She doesn't love him--she does love me,"
he blurted.