"
"Not at all. Some of them are about how to look after the baby. It's no
good the modern young man marrying if he's going to murder his baby
directly afterward, is it?"
"Something in that. There's just one objection to this sterilized
nursery business, though, which she doesn't seem to have detected. How
am I going to provide these things on an income of five thousand and at
the same time live in that luxury which the artist soul demands? Bill,
my lad, you'll have to sacrifice yourself for your father's good. When
I'm a millionaire we'll see about it. Meanwhile--"
"Meanwhile," said Ruth, "come and be dried before you catch your death
of cold." She gathered William Bannister into her lap.
"I pity any germ that tries to play catch-as-catch-can with that
infant," remarked Kirk. "He'd simply flatten it out in a round. Did you
ever see such a chest on a kid of that age?"
It was after the installation of Whiskers at the studio that the
diminution of Mrs. Porter's visits became really marked. There was
something almost approaching a battle over Whiskers, who was an Irish
terrier puppy which Hank Jardine had presented to William Bannister as
a belated birthday present.
Mrs. Porter utterly excommunicated Whiskers. Nothing, she maintained,
was so notoriously supercharged with bacilli as a long-haired dog.
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