Page 131 of 135 CHAPTER XXI--THE LAST NOTE OF THE DUET - A Duet

'Put it in the out-house,' said he.

'Why the out-house?'

'We keep them there. But you can put it under the sideboard, or in the coal-scuttle, or where you like as long as you don't make any more noise.'

'Why, surely, Crosse--' But Frank suddenly sprang out of his chair.

'I'm blessed if that infernal kitten isn't somewhere in the room!'

And there when he turned was the grim, kindly face of old Doctor Jordan facing him. He carried in the crook of his arm a brown shawl with something round and small muffled up in it. There was one slit in front, and through this came a fist about the size of a marble, the thumb doubled under the tiny fingers, and the whole limb giving circular waves, as if the owner were cheering lustily at his own successful arrival. 'Here am I, good people, hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!' cried the waving hand. Then as the slit in the shawl widened Frank saw that behind the energetic fist there was a huge open mouth, a little button of a nose, and two eyes which were so resolutely screwed up that it seemed as if the owner had made a resolution never under any circumstances to take the least notice of this new world into which it had been transported. Frank dropped his pipe and stood staring at this apparition.

'What! What's that?'

'The baby!'

'Baby? Whose baby?'

'Your baby, of course.'

'My baby! Where--where did you get it?'

Doctor Jordan burst out laughing.

'You are like a man who has just been wakened out of his sleep,' said he. 'Why, Crosse, your wife has been bad all day, but she's all right now, and here's your son and heir--a finer lad of the age I never saw--fighting weight about seven pounds.'

Frank was a very proud man at the roots of his nature. He did not readily give himself away. Perhaps if he had been quite alone he might at that moment, as the great wave of joy washed through his soul, bearing all his fears and forebodings away upon its crest, have dropped upon his knees in prayer. But prayer comes not from the knee but from the heart, and the whole strength of his nature breathed itself out in silent thanks to that great Fate which goes its way regardless either of thanks or reproaches. The doctor saw a pale self-contained young man before him, and thought him strangely wanting in emotion.

'Well!' said he, impatiently. 'Is she all right?'

'Yes. Won't you take your son?'

'Could she see me?'

'I don't suppose five minutes would do any harm.'

Dr. Jordan said afterwards that it was three steps which took Frank up the fifteen stairs. The nurse who met him at the corner looks back on it as the escape of her lifetime. Maude lay in bed with a face as pale as the pillow which framed it. Her lips were bloodless but smiling.

'Frank!'

'My own dear sweet girlie!'

'You never knew. Did you, Frank? Tell me that you never knew.'

		I am such a partisan of the silence discipline that I could spend hours talking about it. George Bernard Shaw