Repeated
failures to reveal his burning emotions never caused him to lose the
conviction that he would do it for certain next time.
It was in his customary braced-up, do-or-die frame of mind that he
entered the nursery now.
His visit to Keggs had been rather a late one and had lasted some time
before the subject of the White Hope had been broached, with the result
that, when Steve arrived among the white tiles and antiseptics, he
found his godson in bed and asleep. In a chair by the cot Mamie sat
sewing.
Her eyes widened with surprise when she saw who the visitor was, and
she put a finger to her lip and pointed to the sleeper. And, as we have
to record another of the long list of Steve's failures to propose we
may say here, in excuse, that this reception took a great deal of the
edge off the dashing resolution which had been his up to that moment.
It made him feel self-conscious from the start.
"Whatever brings you up here, Steve?" whispered Mamie.
It was not a very tactful remark, perhaps, considering that Steve was
the child's godfather, and, as such, might reasonably expect to be
allowed a free pass to his nursery; but Mamie, like Keggs, had fallen
so under the domination of Lora Delane Porter that she had grown to
consider it almost a natural law that no one came to see Bill unless
approved of and personally conducted by her.
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