“I feel surer that you’ve got something up your sleeve,” he said.  And, to the doctor:  “I don’t imagine that in saying my wife is perfectly well, you mean to suggest an absence of all reasonable caution.”

The doctor took the hint, expatiated largely; it was always well to be careful—­one couldn’t, in fact, be too careful.  The human body at best, more especially the—­ah—­feminine human body, was a delicate machine, not to be abused without inviting serious consequences.  He was even a little reproachful about it.

“But there’s no more reason, is there,” Rose persisted, “why I should be careful than why any other woman should—­my nurse-maid for example?  Is she any healthier than I am?”

It was indiscreet of the doctor to look at her before he answered.  Her eyes were sparkling, the color bright in her cheeks; unconsciously, she had flattened her shoulders back and drawn a good deep breath down into her lungs.  The doctor smiled a smile of surrender and turned back to Rodney.  “I’ll confess,” he said, “that in my experience, Mrs. Aldrich is almost a lusus naturae—­a perfectly sound, healthy woman.”

Rose smiled widely and contentedly on the pair of them.  “That’s more like it,” she said to the doctor.  “Thanks very much.”

But after he had gone, she did not spring anything on Rodney, as he fully expected she would.  She took him out for a tramp through the park in the dusk of a perfect autumn afternoon, and went to a musical show with him in the evening.  She might have been, as far as he could see, the Rose of a year ago.  She had the same lithe boyish swing.  She even wore, though he didn’t know it, the same skirt for their walk in the park that she had worn on some of their tramps before they were married.  And when they had had their evening at the theater, and a bite of supper somewhere, and come home, she let him drop off to sleep without a word that would explain her insistence on getting a clean bill of health from the doctor.

But the next morning, while Doris was busy in the laundry, she found Mrs. Ruston in the nursery and had a talk with that lady, which was destined to produce seismic upheavals.

“I’ve decided to make a little change in our arrangements, Mrs. Ruston,” she said.  “But I don’t think it’s one that will disturb you very much.  I’m going to let Doris go—­I’ll get her another place, of course—­and do her work myself.”

Mrs. Ruston compressed her lips, and went on for a minute with what she was doing to one of the twins, as if she hadn’t heard.

“Doris is quite satisfactory, madam,” she said at last.  “I’d not advise making a change.  She’s a dependable young woman, as such go.  Of course I watch her very close.”

“I think I can promise to be dependable,” Rose said.  “I don’t know much about babies, of course, but I think I can learn as well as Doris.  Anyhow, I can wheel them about and wash their clothes and boil bottles and things as well as she does.  For the rest, you can tell me what to do just as you tell her.”