Part 48 (1/2)

”Those were days,” said I, ”when people thought they could only be good by being very cruel.”

”They would have been more cruel if Hester had not loved the minister,”

said Carlotta, looking at me wistfully.

”My dear little girl,” said I, seeing whither her thoughts were tending, ”do not bother your brain with psychological problems.”

”What are--?” began Carlotta.

I pinched the question, as it were, out of her cheek and smiled and took away the book.

”They are a dreadful disease my little girl has been afflicted with for some time. When you sit and wrinkle your forehead like this,” and I scowled forbiddingly, whereat Carlotta laughed, ”you are suffering from acute psychological problem.”

”Then I am thinking,” said Carlotta, reflectively.

”Don't think too much, dear, just now,” said I. ”It is best for you to be happy and calm and contented. Otherwise I'll have to tell the doctor, and he'll give you the blackest and nastiest physic you have ever tasted.”

”To cure me of a what-you-call-it problem?”

”Yes,” said I, emphatically.

”_Hou!_” laughed Carlotta in a superior way, ”physic can't cure that.”

”You are relying on an exploded fallacy immortalised in a hackneyed Shakespearian quotation,” I remarked.

”Go on,” said Carlotta, encouragingly.

”What do you mean?” I asked, taken aback.

”Oh, you darling Seer Marcous,” cried Carlotta. ”It is so lovely to hear you talk!”

So I went on talking, and the distress occasioned by the ”Scarlet Letter” was forgotten.

I have mentioned Carlotta's needlework. This was undertaken at the sapient instigation of Antoinette, who in her turn, I am sure, neglected the ladle for the scissors, and cast many of her duties upon the silent but sympathetic Stenson. Carlotta herself delighted in these preparations. She was never happier than when curled up on the sofa, a box of chocolates by her side, her work-basket frothing over, like a great dish of _oeufs a la neige_, with lawn or mull or what-not, and (I verily believe to complete her content) my ungainly figure and hatchet-face within her purview. She would eat and sew industriously.

Sometimes she would press too hard on a sweetmeat and with a little cry would hold up a sticky finger and thumb.

”Look,” she would say, puckering up her face.

And to save from soilure the dainty fabric she was working at, I would rise and wipe her fingers with my handkerchief; whereupon she would coo out the sweetest ”thank you,” in the world, and perhaps hold up a diminutive garment.

”Isn't it pretty?”

”Yes, my dear,” I would say, and I would turn aside wondering at the exquisite refinements of pain that men were sometimes called upon to bear.

At last the time came. I sat up all night in a torture of suspense, having got it into my foolish head that Carlotta might die. The doctor came upon me at six in the morning sitting half frozen at the bottom of the stairs. When he gave me his cheery news he seemed to develop from a middle-aged, commonplace man into a radiant archangel.

I met Antoinette soon afterwards, busy, important, exultant. She nevertheless graciously accorded me a brief interview.

”And to think, Monsieur,” she exclaimed, as if the crowning triumph of a million ions of evolution had at, last been attained, ”to think that it is a boy!”