It was extraordinary. To be asked at one's own door if one were oneself!
We entered without replying. Letitia kept well in the background. I imagined that we should find our apartment looted. Perhaps the strange woman was--looting!
The drawing-room was untouched. Everything was in its proper place, not an ornament missing; not a gewgaw disturbed. The woman was still smiling.
"I congratulate you, Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax," she said with a Finnish intonation. "You will be glad, I know. It occurred yesterday, and it was too late to telegraph. Olga--"
The strange woman simpered, and looked down. "Olga," she murmured, "Olga has twins--two of the sweetest little babies, a boy and a girl. One she is going to call Archie, and the other Letitia. Oh, she is as well as can be expected. She--"
I looked round quickly, the extent of the calamity breaking in on my dense brain. I turned to Letitia. She had fainted--on the tiger-head.
I should like to drop this episode, without further comment, where I left it at the close of the last chapter. Personally, I hate dotting i's and crossing t's. An interrogation mark always seems to me most satisfactory--as delightful as the after-theater supper for which somebody else pays. Still, I realize that I am in the minority; that the majority cries for the comfortable adjustment of odds and ends, without any strain upon the imagination.
I must therefore, put the finishing touches to the "incident" of Olga Allallami.
The odd thing about Letitia's behavior was that her affection for Miss Allallami evaporated so quickly that it made me wonder if my wife could possibly be fickle. It was, however, the twins that settled Letitia. I feel convinced that had cook been guilty of one mere child, Letitia's sweet womanly nature would have remained sympathetic. The dual blow infuriated her. She thought twins vulgar and most unrefined, and could not bear to discuss them. Perhaps it was just as well. Had Letitia continued to "feel as a sister" toward our recalcitrant cook, things would have been very disagreeable, and the indications were that Olga, with one child, would have been allowed full scope.
As it was, we simply abandoned our apartment. We inflicted ourselves upon the long-suffering Aunt Julia, in Tarrytown, and left cook and her brace of children in our home until such time as they could leave it. We learned that Miss Allallami's husband--for she was, indeed, a wife--had been employed in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and had returned to Finland to make a home for his little Olga. She, anxious to earn a few pennies--honest or otherwise--had remained behind, until she felt competent to join him.