And just then Rosie came.  She carried the baby, still faintly odorous of violets, held tight in unaccustomed arms.  She looked awkward and conscious, but her amused smile at herself was half tender.

“Hello, Claribel,” she said.  “How are you?  Just look here, Al!  What do you think of this?”

Al got up sheepishly and looked at the child.

“Boy or girl?” he asked politely.

“Girl; but it’s the living image of you,” said Rose—­for Rose and the Nurse were alike in the wiles of the serpent.

“Looks like me!” Al observed caustically.  “Looks like an over-ripe tomato!”

But he drew himself up a trifle.  Somewhere in his young and hardened soul the germs of parental pride, astutely sowed, had taken quick root.

“Feel how heavy she is,” Rose commanded.  And Al held out two arms unaccustomed to such tender offices.

“Heavy!  She’s about as big as a peanut.”

“Mind her back,” said Rose, remembering instructions.

After her first glance Claribel had not looked at the child.  But now, in its father’s arms, it began to whimper.  The mother stirred uneasily, and frowned.

“Take it away!” she ordered.  “I told them not to bring it here.”

The child cried louder.  Its tiny red face, under the powder, turned purple.  It beat the air with its fists.  Al, still holding it in his outstretched arms, began vague motions to comfort it, swinging it up and down and across.  But it cried on, drawing up its tiny knees in spasms of distress.  Claribel put her fingers in her ears.

“You’ll have to feed it!” Rose shouted over the din.

The girl comprehended without hearing, and shook her head in sullen obstinacy.

“What do you think of that for noise?” said Al, not without pride.  “She’s like me, all right.  When I’m hungry, there’s hell to pay if I’m not fed quick.  Here,”—­he bent down over Claribel,—­“you might as well have dinner now, and stop the row.”

Not ungently, he placed the squirming mass in the baptismal dress beside the girl on the bed.  With the instinct of ages, the baby stopped wailing and opened her mouth.

“The little cuss!” cried Al, delighted.  “Ain’t that me all over?  Little angel-face the minute I get to the table!”

Unresisting now, Claribel let Rose uncover her firm white breast.  The mother’s arm, passively extended by Rose to receive the small body, contracted around it unconsciously.

She turned and looked long at the nuzzling, eager mouth, at the red hand lying trustfully open on her breast, at the wrinkled face, the indeterminate nose, the throbbing fontanelle where the little life was already beating so hard.

“A girl, Rose!” she said.  “My God, what am I going to do with her?”

Rose was not listening.  The Junior Medical’s turn had come at last.  Downstairs in the chapel, he was standing by the organ, his head thrown back, his heavy brown hair (which would never stay parted without the persuasion of brilliantine) bristling with earnestness.