"Does it weigh very heavily on you?" she asked coquettishly.
"As you see, it dragged me here at this late hour!"
"Poor you!" she sympathised; then instantly pulled a long face and explained her alarms deprecatingly while she drew him—still holding his hand—to her bedroom that he might see the child for himself and judge of his condition.
It was her habit to have the baby's crib by her bed, and the ayah close at hand in case of disturbed nights, while Meredith was compelled to retire to a separate suite, adjoining hers. "Such a young infant needs his mother, you selfish old Daddy, and must not be deprived." Arguments respecting the advantages of employing an English nurse and establishing a nursery had been swept aside as arbitrary and unfeeling. As if she could ever consent to a hireling occupying her place with her beloved child! Others might do as they pleased and lose their place in their little ones' affections, but not she! Fathers should consider their offspring before themselves. When Meredith had looked unconvinced and injured, she had tried to soften the blow by cajoleries, in the use of which she was past-mistress. Silly goose! as if the same roof did not cover them both! and didn't she belong to him and no one else in the world?—"Was he going to be a cross boy, then, and make his little girl's life miserable with big, ugly frowns?..."
The doctor gave the child a brief examination as he and Joyce leant over the crib, shoulder to shoulder. She seemed so unconscious of the close contact and of its effect on the average masculine nature that he mentally decided she was either a simpleton or a practised flirt, given to playing with fire.
"I shall sleep so much better tonight now that I know there is nothing seriously wrong with my precious darling!" she said, returning beside him to the drawing-room and tantalising him with brief glances from her shy, sweet eyes.
"You worry quite unnecessarily, take it from me," he returned. "Don't put him in a glass case, and he will do all right. You should go out more."
"I shall, when Ray comes back. He has the car."
"Play tennis every afternoon at the Club."
"I daren't! I play so badly," she pouted.