"It's no good worrying about your wife, Mr. Jevons. They all do it over the first child. You'll soon get used to it, after a few more," and she hurried upstairs. I was tempted to pursue her to argue this. What sort of programme did she imagine that Helen and I were embarked upon? "At least, now I come to think of it," I said to myself, "Helen and I have never discussed this." More than one baby?--the thought followed me about the room. How utterly preposterous. H'm. I sat down in a chair by the window. The idea was overwhelming. I had always thought of Helen and me as two persons going through life together. We had accepted, without yet realizing at all what it meant, one amendment to our original plan. But the nurse had conjured up the image of an indefinite sequence. Clearly, it was unthinkable. Yet I was startled to consider how many persons in this world had more than one baby. There was my sister--making two in this very house. Chitty had six. Examples multiplied themselves before me. "Helen, of course, shall decide this," was the rather unexpectedly sensible conclusion I finally arrived at. It was, nevertheless, a disturbing thought that the nurse had suggested.
My father and mother went out to dinner by themselves, after asking me for news. None had come. The doctor urged me to "clear out for a bit." The house was really intolerable. "Come back about ten, if you like," he said. I tried to walk to Piccadilly. The task was impossible; my knees were too shaky. I took a hansom to the Café Royal and sat there drinking coffee and Benedictine. The waiter brought me a French comic paper. My sense of humour was not equal to it. At half past nine I bought Helen some violets at the expensive little flower stall on the way out. Its flowers were probably intended for _demi-mondaines_--at least, the price indicated that fact--but the violets had as yet suffered no contamination. "It will make Helen smile," I thought, "when I tell her where I got them and with what a knowing air the yellow-haired vulture behind the counter sold them to me." At the bookstall I got Helen some French papers and the Paris New York _Herald_. I hesitated over chocolates--there was no likelihood, I reflected, of running the night's blockade with them. Instead, I went back into the café and had the waiter wrap me up a bottle of green Chartreuse. Helen loved it. "_C'est pour une malade_," I told the waiter. He grew sympathetic at once, suggesting jellied bouillon in glass. I took a pint of it, as well as a truffled _paté_ of chicken, "_en aspic_." The waiter scratched his head, but could think of nothing more. I gave him half a crown for himself, while the dignified doorman called me a hansom.