"Well, at any rate, the milk is a different thing; just look at the cream on it. Baby ought to thrive on stuff like that, oughtn't she?"
"That is just what I am anxious about; It has only upset her so far. Hark! is that baby crying? Precious thing! Do you mind managing Sonny's egg and pouring out the coffee, Digby, while I run upstairs?"
"I am inclined to agree with Plato," began the musician, earnestly; but his wife was gone, and Sonny was clamoring for food. He took up an egg, and then almost dropped it again as the wooden door was pushed open from without, with the same creak as of yore.
"Auntie Joan, Auntie Joan," shrieked Sonny, tumbling off his high-chair with a clatter, and dragging the tablecloth with a medley of spoons and knives after him. The musician was thankful for the diversion at that moment, and forebore to swear as he set his son on his feet again, and held out his hand with a smile to Lady Joan. She was in her riding-habit, and he told himself that she looked like Diana, or any other goddess that represents the woman a man admires.
"Well?" she said, with her fresh, breezy laugh, "how soon will you be tired of picknicking and ready to come to terms? And where's Norah?"
"Upstairs. There's a draught under the bedroom door, and Mrs. Haxtell has quarrelled violently with nurse. Baby cries perpetually--teeth. And I can't get any breakfast. That's all so far, I think;" and he laughed as heartily as she, and they bumped their heads together under the table in picking up the fallen utensils, and came up again with red faces just as Norah returned with the baby in her arms.
"Oh, is it you, Joan? So glad to see you, dear; sit down and have some breakfast. Why haven't you poured out the coffee, Digby? How helpless men are! Take baby a minute, will you? There, you have set her off again, just when I had quieted her. She has taken cold in the night, that's what it is. Hush, hush! There then, it sha'n't, that it sha'n't!"
"After all," began the musician in a momentary lull, "I do think Plato--"
"Will you give Digby something to eat, Joan, dear?" interposed Norah gently; and peace presently pervaded the breakfast-table.
"The lambs _is_ fat, isn't they, daddy?" asked Sonny, from the window-seat. "How does the lambs know, daddy, which sheep is their right mother?"