"Why--John!"
He stood smiling almost bashfully.
"I thought you'd better have the whole family while you were about it,"
he said.
She gathered her family into eager hands. "I'd rather have them than
anything in the world!" she said softly.
"They didn't cost much," he volunteered. "Twenty cents apiece--the kind
you send on post-cards, you know."
"I don't care what they cost!" said the little woman. "It's worth it!...
The doctor says I'm going to be real well, John, when I get up."
She was looking at the baby, in his knitted sack. "But there won't be
any more babies," she said half wistfully.
John blew his nose violently and looked out of the window.
"I'd better be going," he announced.
"Yes--time for you to go," said Aunt Jane. She moved with him toward the
door.
In the corridor he turned to her. "Tickled most to death, wa'n't she?--I
was kind o' 'fraid she'd think it was foolish."
"If more men were foolish, the world would get along a good deal
better," said Aunt Jane cryptically.
She beamed on him. "You better not come again for four-five days now,
Mr. Pelton. She'd ought to keep quiet and not think about what the
children are doing and what's going on.
"She can think about her pictures for a while," she added kindly as his
face fell. "There's times when picture children help more than real
ones--more handy for sick folks sometimes."
"I guess that's so," said the man. "I don't know as I ever saw her look
so pleased--not since before we were married," he added thoughtfully.
Aunt Jane watched him march happily down the corridor. Then she turned
back to the room.
The woman had spread the children in a little row along the ridge of the
blanket, and was looking at them with happy eyes. She turned her gaze to
Aunt Jane as she came in.
"Wa'n't that just like a man!" she said deprecatingly.
"Just like a man," assented Aunt Jane. "One of them senseless things
that comes out all right!"
She sat down comfortably by the bed. "Sometimes I think men don't know
any more'n big grampuses--they just go blundering along!" She looked
benevolently at the row of faces on the blanket.