Nevertheless, it was a severe test of my nervous strength to hold Horatio in my arms at four o'clock that afternoon and watch his nurse donning her coat and hat preparatory to a short ride with Marie. I had carefully planned this opportunity for an uninterrupted hour with the baby, but now that it lay just before me I longed to run away from it. The nursery had become to me a temple of mysteries within which I felt chilled and awe-stricken, a victim of supernatural forces against which I was both rebellious and powerless.
After the nurse had left the room I seated myself in a rocking-chair, cuddling Horatio in my arms and softly humming a lullaby, attempting to deceive myself by the thought that I really wished him to sleep for an hour. In my innermost consciousness lay the conviction that I had actually come to the nursery for a heart-to-heart talk with Jack. My deepest desire was to be quickly gratified. A gruff whisper came to me presently from his pretty lips.
"Stop that 'bye-bye, baby,' will you, Clarissa?" he said, petulantly. "Haven't I had enough annoyance for one day?"
"Hush! hush!" I murmured, rocking frantically in the effort to put the child to sleep, despite my realization of the utter inconsistency of my action.
"Don't! don't!" growled the baby. "Do you want me to have _mal-de-mer_, Clarissa? I can't be responsible for what may happen. Where did everybody get the notion that a baby must be shaken after taking? It's getting to be an unbearable nuisance, Clarissa."
"Is that better, Jack?" I whispered, holding him upright on my knees and peering down into his disturbed face, puckered into a little knot, as if he were about to cry aloud.
"Thank you," he muttered, gratefully. "Under the circumstances, my dear, perhaps it's well that I didn't get that Welsh rabbit. But, frankly, I was bitterly disappointed at the moment."
"What can you expect, Jack?" I asked, argumentatively, again astonished at the matter-of-fact way in which I was handling this astounding crisis. "You seem to have a man's appetite but only a baby's digestive apparatus."
"That's my punishment, Clarissa," he explained, in awe-struck tones. "In the former cycle I ate too many rabbits. That was scored against me, under the general head of 'Gluttony,' and the sub-title 'Midnight Unnecessaries.' I'm up against it, Clarissa. I wouldn't complain if it were merely a question of not getting what I want. But it's getting what I don't want that jars me. You understand, of course, my dear, that, generally speaking, I refer to milk. Isn't there something in its place that you could persuade the nurse to give me? Don't babies get--er--malt extract, for instance?"