"Carrie, little woman, if only you won't take on so. There's every reason to hope for the best. The doctor a.s.sured us."

"How long before we know? Go get Doctor Allison over. Ask Roy Kemble to run over to Horton's and telephone for Doctor Birch. I want them here. My baby!"

"Carrie, Carrie, haven't they told you time and time again there is nothing they can do now? Don't antagonize Doctor Birch by calling him over here again to-night. Everything is being done for the child. Now all we can do is to sit and wait and hope for the best."

"You don't care! You're made of iron. At a time like this you stop to consider the doctors' feelings. Mine don't count. My baby. Get well, Lilly. Mamma's been cross at times, but never again. We'll do everything to make you happy. You can read your eyes out and mamma won't turn out the light on you. Mamma will buy you books and a box of paints and a little bird's-eye-maple room all your own. Lilly, mamma's baby. We're going housekeeping--your own piano--your own room. Aren't we, Ben?

Aren't we?"

"Yes, Carrie."

"You can take your choice, baby, of all the things you want to be. Mamma won't oppose any more, or papa. Opera singing if you want it. You come by it naturally from my choir voice. Whatever you say, baby. Even an actress and all the elocution and singing lessons you--"

"Carrie!"

"Oh, you don't care! You're only her father. What does a father know?

You don't care."

Against this age-old indictment of paternity, and absolutely without precedent, the patient, the iron-gray head of Mr. Becker fell forward, a fearful and silent storm of sobs beating against his repression.

Full of dumfounded hysteria, walking on her knees around the bed edge to him, Mrs. Becker drew down his head into the wreath of her arms, kissing into it, mingling her tears with his, and tasting their anguish.

"My darling! Ben--please, darling! I say a lot of things I don't mean.

You are my husband--and my life. Ben--don't! I can't stand it! Ben!"

At six o'clock Lilly opened her eyes. They were clear and cool and the petal-like quality was out on her skin.

"Sweet Alice," she said, "oh, Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," a bit of dream floating up with her like seaweed to the surface of consciousness.

"Sweet Alice."

She had been reading _Trilby_, surrept.i.tiously filched from Mrs.

Kemble's stack of novels.

"Lilly--mamma's Lilly!"

"Where--I--Where--"

"In your own room, sweetheart, and your own mother and father beside you."

"I thought--Sweet Alice--"

"The fever is gone now, Lilly. You won't have any of those thoughts any more. Go to sleep now, papa's girl."

"I must have been singing--'Faust'--what makes you and papa--so angry--with me--dears?"

"We're not, Lilly. Nothing makes us angry any more."

She was too tired to smile.

"I kept dreaming, mamma, that my hair was two big honey-colored braids all wound up with pearls, like Marguerite's picture in _Stories of the Operas_."

"Go to sleep, Lilly, like a good child. Our girl has got too much sense to fill her head up with such nonsense."

"No, no, papa, I won't have common sense. I want to ride up to meet the sun, like the princess in--"

"She wants to what? Are you sure her fever is gone, Carrie?"

"Nonsense! It is stuff she reads in her fairy tales. Yes, darling, anything you want."

"You know, mamma--pearls--in my hair--"

"Yes, yes, darling. Sh-h-h!"

"Mamma?"

"Yes."

"We're middle-cla.s.s, aren't we?"

"What does she mean?"

"Middle-cla.s.s people, I mean. You know."

"Why, yes, dear, we're middle-cla.s.s. I guess that is what you'd call it.

What an idea!"

"Help me."

"Yes, yes. How, baby? The doctor will be here any--"

"You don't know what I mean. No matter what I say, you don't know what I mean. Isn't that terrible?"

"Help you to get well, that's what mamma and papa are going to do."

"No, no, no! Help me--out--up!"

Presently Lilly fell asleep. To her watching parents her light and regular breathing took on the meter of a Doxology.

CHAPTER VI

Center High School, the city's only at a time when half a million souls beat up like sea around it, a model and modern inst.i.tution that was presently and paradoxically to become architectural paragon for what to avoid in future high-school buildings, was again within street-car distance, except on usually bland days, when Lilly and Flora Kemble would walk home through Vandaventer Place, the first of those short, private thoroughfares of pretentious homes that were presently to run through the warp of the city like threads of gold.

On these homeward walks Flora and Lilly, who referred to each other as "my chum," were fond of peripatetically exchanging the views, the consciousness, and the sweetness of sixteen.

"If you had your choice, Lilly, what house would you select for yours in Vandaventer Place?"

"None."