Dan got up and began to pace the room, his face reddening with a prophetic distress. “Oh, golly!” he groaned. “You’re goin’ to object to it. I see that now!”
He turned to her appealingly. “Look here, Lena; I _did_ speak about it to her too soon. Of course I ought to’ve consulted you first;—I was just so enthusiastic about bein’ the boy’s father, and she’s such a dear, good, old friend—well, I guess I was excited. I know I ought to’ve waited and asked you who you wanted—but I didn’t. I _did_ just blurt out and ask her, so it’s done and can’t be helped. Well, I can’t go back on it; I _can’t_ go over there and just plain tell her you don’t want her!”
“Can’t you?” Lena said. “It doesn’t matter to me what you tell her.”
“You’re not goin’ to make me, are you?” he asked piteously.
Mistaking this icy permission, he uttered an almost vociferous sigh of relief. “Well, I do truly thank you, Lena. If you’re noble enough to overlook my selfishness in not thinkin’ about who you’d want to have for Henry’s godmother—well, my goodness, I _am_ grateful to you, and I know it’s more’n I deserve. It’s a noble action on your part, and I’m sure it’s goin’ to lead to splendid results, because now you can’t help but get better acquainted with Martha, and you’ll do what I’ve hoped for so long: you’ll get to likin’ her and thinkin’ as much of her as everybody else does. With her in that relation——”
“In the relation of the baby’s godmother. From the very day of the christening you’ll——”
“There may not be any such day,” Lena interrupted. “You seem to have mistaken me. There may not be any christening—at least not here. If she’s to be the godmother, the baby and I will be with my own family in New York.”
“Oh, golly!” Dan said, and sank down on the side of the bed again. “Oh, golly!”
Lena became vehement. “I should think you _would_ say ‘golly’! If you had a spark of remorse in you, I think you’d say more than that!”
“You don’t?” she cried. “You don’t see what you have to be remorseful for? You bring me out here to the life you’ve given me, and you see nothing to regret? You bring me to this flat town and its flat people, where not once in months can I hear a note of real music and where there’s no art and no beauty and no _life_—after you’d given me your word I should have a full year in Europe!—and you watch me struggling to bear it, to bear it with the best bravery I have in me, and the most kindness to you—and to be cheerful—and I _dare_ you to say I haven’t made the best of it! I _have_—and how _hard_ I’ve had to try most of the time to accomplish it! And what have you been? Who was the man I found I’d married? Even in this hole of a town he’s called a failure—the town failure! That’s who you got me to marry! Even these people out here—your own people—even they take you as a joke—the town joke! And when I make the best of it I can and bear it the best I can, and go on, month after month, not complaining, and suffer what I suffered when the baby came, you go gayly over to the woman whose hand you held the very first day I came here—yes, you did!—and the woman you’ve compared me to unfavourably every time you’ve ever dared to speak of me to her—yes, you have; every single _time_!—and you ask her to come and be the godmother to my child! You can go over there and tell her anything you like—tell her again you want my baby to be like her—but there’s one thing you’d better tell her besides, and that is, there won’t _be_ any christening if she comes to it!”