“Not unless you telephone me, and I don’t think you’ll have to,” George Valentine said.  Rachael’s face grew radiant with joy.

“Oh, George, then he is better!” She was breathing like a runner.

“Better!  I think he’ll be himself to-morrow.  Console yourself, my dear Rachael, with the thought that you’ll go through this a hundred times with every one of your children!”

“Oh, what a world!” Rachael said, half laughing and half sighing.  But later she said to Warren, “Yet isn’t it deliciously worth while!”

He had persuaded her to have some supper, and then they had come back to the nursery, to see if the baby really would eat.  He had awakened, and had had his bath, and was crying again, but, as Rachael eagerly said, it was a healthy cry.  Trembling and smiling, she took the little creature in her arms, and when the busy little lips found her breast, Rachael felt as if she could hardly bear the exquisite incoming rush of joy again.

Warren, watching her, smiled in deep satisfaction, and Miss Snow smiled, too.  But before she gave herself up to the luxury of possession the mother’s tears fell hot on the baby’s delicate gown and tiny face, and from that hour Rachael loved her son with the passionate and intense devotion she felt for his father.

Years later, looking at the pictures they took of him that summer, or perhaps stopped by the sight of some white-coated baby in the street, she would say to herself,—­with that little heartache all mothers know, “Ah, but Jim was the darling baby!” After the first scare he bloomed like a rose, a splendid, square, royal boy who laughed joyously when admitted to the company of his family and friends, and lay contentedly dozing and smiling when it seemed good to them to ignore him.  Rachael found him the most delightfully amusing and absorbing element her life had ever known; she would break into ecstatic laughter at his simplest feat—­when he yawned, or pressed his little downy head against the bars of his crib and stared unsmilingly at her.  She would run to the nursery the instant she arrived home, her eager, “How’s my boy?” making the baby crow, and struggle to reach her, and it was an event to her to meet his coach in the park, and give him her purse or parasol handle with which to play.  Often old Mary, the nurse, would see Mrs. Gregory pick up a pair of tiny white shoes that still bore the imprint of the fat little feet, and touch them to her lips, or catch a crumpled little linen coat from the drawer, and bury her face in it for a moment.

Even in his tiny babyhood he was companionable to his mother, Rachael even consenting to the plan of taking him to Home Dunes in June, although by this arrangement she saw Warren only at week-end intervals until the doctor’s vacation came in August.  When he came down, and the big car honked at the gate, she invariably had the baby in her arms when she came to meet him.

“Hello, Daddy.  Here we are!  How are you, dearest?” Rachael would say, adding, before he could answer her:  “We want you to notice our chic Italian socks, Doctor Gregory; how’s that for five months?  Take him, Greg!  Go to Daddy, Little Mister!”