"Behold the alderman!" she murmured with grimness.
That was all. But the three words took thirty years off his back, snatched the half-crown cigar out of his hand, and reduced him again to the raw, hungry boy of Brougham Street. And he knew that he had sinned gravely in not coming up-stairs very much earlier.
"Is that you, Father?" called the high voice of Robert from the back of the screen.
He had to admit to his son that it was he.
The infant lay on his back in Maisie's bed, while his mother sat lightly on the edge of nurse's bed near-by.
"Well, you're a nice chap!" said Edward Henry, avoiding Nellie's glance, but trying to face his son as one innocent man may face another, and not perfectly succeeding. He never could feel like a real father somehow.
"My temperature's above normal," announced Robert proudly, and then added with regret, "but not much!"
There was the clinical thermometer--instrument which Edward Henry despised and detested as being an inciter of illnesses--in a glass of water on the table between the two beds.
"Well, Robert?" said Edward Henry cheerfully.
He was glad that the child was in one of his rare loquacious moods, because the chatter not only proved that the dog had done no serious damage,--it also eased the silent strain between himself and Nellie.
"Why did you play the Funeral March, Father?" asked Robert; and the question fell into the tranquillity of the room rather like a bomb that had not quite decided whether or not to burst.
For the second time that evening Edward Henry was dashed.
"Have you been meddling with my music-rolls?"
"How did you know I was playing a funeral march?" Edward Henry demanded.
"Oh, _I_ didn't tell him!" Nellie put in, excusing herself before she was accused. She smiled benignly, as an angel woman, capable of forgiving all. But there were moments when Edward Henry hated moral superiority and Christian meekness in a wife. Moreover, Nellie somewhat spoiled her own effect by adding with an artificial continuation of the smile, "You needn't look at _me_!"
Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeed ventured to look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner which she implied.
"It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.