"Give me the confounded pram, nurse," said Edward Henry. "I'll cure
her."
But he did not cure her. However, he had to stick grimly to the
perambulator. Nellie tripped primly in black silk on one side of it.
Nurse had the wayward Ralph by the hand. And Robert, taciturn, stalked
alone, adding up London and making a very small total of it.
Suddenly Edward Henry halted the perambulator, and, stepping away
from it, raised his hat. An excessively elegant young woman leading a
Pekinese by a silver chain stopped as if smitten by a magic dart and
held spellbound.
"How do you do, Miss April?" said Edward Henry, loudly. "I was hoping
to meet you. This is my wife. Nellie--this is Miss April." Nellie
bowed stiffly in her black silk. (Naught of the fresh maiden about
her now!) And it has to be said that Elsie April in all her young and
radiant splendour and woman-of-the-worldliness was equally stiff. "And
there are my two boys. And this is my little girl--in the pram."
Maisie screamed, and pushed an expensive doll out of the perambulator.
Edward Henry saved it by its boot as it fell.
"And this is her doll. And this is nurse," he finished. "Fine breezy
morning, isn't it?"
In due course the processions moved on.
"Well, that's done!" Edward Henry muttered to himself. And sighed.
CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST NIGHT
I
It was upon an evening in June--and a fine evening, full of the
exquisite melancholy of summer in a city--that Edward Henry stood
before a window, drumming thereon as he had once, a less-experienced
man with hair slightly less grey, drummed on the table of the mighty
and arrogant Slosson.
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