“Easy there, Phonzie!”

“There!”

“Watch out!”

“Whew! that was a close shave!”

“Here, let me unlock the door.  ’Sh-h-h!”

“Don’t go, Gert.  Come on in, and after the big show I’ll send you home in a cab.”

“Nix!  After a three-hour walk, a street-car will look good enough to me.”

“Well, then, come on in, just a minute, Gert.  I want you to see the fun.  What you bet she’s asleep in the front room, sore as thunder, too?  We’ll sneak back and dump the kid in and wheel him in on her.”

“Aw no!  I—­I got to go now, Phonzie.”

“Come on, Gert, don’t be a quitter.  Don’t you want to see her face when she knows that Slews has been all a fluke?  Come on, Gert, I’ll wake up the kid if I try to dump him in alone.”

“Well, for just a minute.  I—­I don’t want to butt in on your and—­and her fun.”

They entered with the stealthy espionage of thieves, and in the narrow hallway she waited while he tiptoed to the bedroom and back again, his lips pursed outward in a “’Sh-h-h.”

“She must be in the front room.  The kid’s in his crib.  Come on, Gert.  ’Sh-h-h!”

He was pink-faced and full of caution, raising each foot in exaggerated stealth.  Between them they manoeuvered the carriage down the hallway.

“’Sh-h-h.  If she’s awake, she can hear every word in the front room.”

From her wakeful couch Madam Moores raised herself on her elbow, cupping her ear in her palm, and straining her glance down the long hallway.  The tears had dried on her cheeks.

“Here, Gert, you dump in these things and let me lift the kid.”

“No, no; let me!  Go ’way, Phonzie.  You’ll wake him!  I just want her to be too surprised to open her mouth when she sees him sleeping in it like a top.”

She threw back the net drapery and leaned to the heart of the crib, and the blood ran in a flash across her face.

“Little darling—­little Phonzie darling!”

“Don’t wake him, Gert.”

She was reluctant to withdraw herself.  “His little darling fists, so pink and curled up!  Little Phonzie darling!”

He hung over each process, proud and awkward.

“Little darling—­little darling—­here, Phonzie help.”

They transferred the burden, the child not moving on his pillow.  In the shallow heart of the perambulator, the high froth of pillows about him, he lay like a bud, his soft profile against the lace, and his skin like the innermost petal of a rose.

“Phonzie, ain’t he—­ain’t he the softest little darling!  Gawd! how—­how she’ll love to—­to be wheeling him!”

His fingers fumbled with excitement and fell to strapping and buckling with a great show and a great ineffectually.

“Here, help me let down the glass top.”

“’Sh-h-h-h!  Every word carries in this flat.”

“Now!”

“Now!”