"But look here, old lady. If we're going right away from everywhere
without any home, where's the child going to be born?"
"On the battlefield," she murmured sleepily.
He groaned, and once more his impatient twistings snatched the blanket
away.
"Oh damn the Keltic imagination! Why can't you get a grip on things and
be practical?"
Once more she was wide-awake, laughing with intense enjoyment.
"I can't see what there is to laugh at," he protested. "Marcella, has it
occurred to you what sort of heritage this kiddy of ours has?"
Purposely misunderstanding him she flung out both arms wide, to embrace
the whole of Australia, bush and forest, mountain, river and desert from
sea to sea.
"You know what I mean," he said desperately. "Me, his father, a
drunkard, with drink in his family, and you the descendant of dozens of
drunkards. And what's more, though you are not a drunkard, you're as mad
as a hatter. What the devil is the poor little beggar going to do?"
She was suddenly awake and very serious.
"Listen, Louis," she said, holding his hands very tight. "I got that
jerk-back most dreadfully in Sydney. Mrs. King was saying that the
crowning mercy of her life was the fact that she hadn't any children.
But it's a mad, bad, heretical sort of fear, the sort of heresy against
nature that people ought to be burnt at the stake for believing! This
child is no more your child and mine than Jesus was the child of Joseph
the carpenter, or--or Romulus and Remus were the children of the
wolf-mother.
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